Kissing the Witch

1. Which of these stories is your favorite? Why? Which best captures the situation of women today?

I would have to say that out of all of the stories I liked, The Tale of the Brother and The Tale of the Skin. The Tale of the Brother was just a great one to read because of the passion and devotion this young girl had to go find her brother. Seeing her brother being taken away in front of her eyes was probably a traumatic experience for her. It took her lots of strength and bravery to venture out and take a chance hoping she will find her brother. You can tell she was physically unable to make such a long journey but she still pushed through risking her own health and life. I know that my brother and I are super close and I would do exactly the same thing! The Tale of the Skin was also an interesting story to me because of the challenges this young girl had to go through to get out of an awkward situation. She lost her mother and her father was trying to marry her. That in itself is just mind blowing and for this girl to make the decision to risk her life to venture out rather than staying in the life she knew she doesn’t want, risking her secure life of luxury, just to make sure she is safe from her father is so brave. She didn’t have anything to take with her but only her beautiful dresses. She finally is given help and a job by a prince who cant see her true beauty till she takes off the mud and dirt and puts on one of her beautiful dresses. For the first time you read that once the king is not able to see her true beauty beneath the dirt she leaves! It has always pissed me off to see that these princes in the fairy tales can’t recognize anyone unless they are dirt free, make up on, and wearing a remarkable dress. They sing a song about how they met the true love of their life and then when she is in common attire they can’t recognize them, its BS! Finally in this story she leaves saying “ Well F*** you if you cant recognize me with a little dirt on my face!” It’s awesome! I know a lot of women today who don’t change themselves for their men but you also have women who would so its just depends on what you value and what’s important to you personally.

2. Why does the author title the book Kissing the Witch?

This particular story sort of brings all the stories together. If I had known that it would have been interesting to read the book from the end to the beginning. Who is pure evil or who is evil only because of their background? I know that I would have thought that all the evil characters were just born evil but then you read about their backgrounds and what they had to go through and then you second think yourself asking are they really evil?  There really are many sides to a story and I like being able to get more thoughts and details about more characters than just the one telling the story or just about the main character. There is no happily ever after and the girl goes home to make her own decisions on how she wants to live her life.