Vassa in the Night Author Sarah Porter on Transforming Russian Folklore into a Modern Fairy Tale

In Ivan Bilibin’s classic illustration for the Russian fairytale “Vassilissa the Beautiful,” a girl with braided hair makes her way through the dim woods. She doesn’t run, but steps gingerly, her expression guarded; the night is dark and the way uncertain. In her hand is a stake, topped by a skull with burning eyes. More skulls blaze around a little house on chicken legs, glimpsed through the trees behind her: it’s the home of an old witch, a Baba Yaga.
A small child on her mother’s lap, watching that girl fleeing, meeting the fiery gaze of those skulls, will likely never forget what she’s seen. She’ll smell the dank leaves underfoot and the acrid tang of the skull’s magic flame, and she will follow Vassilissa through the darkness.
At least, that’s how it was for me, on the many evenings when my family read aloud from Pace Wheeler’s Russian Wonder Tales, a book which is now tragically out of print and not so easy to find. Vassilissa’s struggle stayed with me through all the years that followed, and so did the model of heroism she represents. Unlike many modern heroes, Vassilissa does not kick ass. She survives and prevails with the help of her magic doll, but also through her own intelligence and sensitivity; she has a kind of situational awareness, an aliveness to emotional nuance, that warns her away from the traps Baba Yaga sets for her.
Like so many fairytale protagonists, Vassilissa comes from a broken home: her mother is dead, her father is gone, and she lives with a hostile stepfamily. Many millions of modern kids live in similar situations, and like Vassilissa, they have to rely on wit and heart to guide them through the shadows. When I grew up and became a writer, and started teaching writing, many of my teenage students reminded me of Vassilissa and of heroes like her. Instead of traversing the dark woods, their journeys were set in the bewildering density of New York City.
From there, it was only a small step to make Vassilissa into Vassa, a purple-haired New York public school girl who happens to have a magic doll, who lives with a stepfamily that never wanted her. Then everything fell into place: instead of living in huts on chicken legs, the Baba Yagas run a chain of convenience stores, also on chicken legs. The black horse Night rides in the original story became a black motorcycle. And Vassilissa’s cautious look informed Vassa’s prickly, defensive, but also kind and vulnerable character.
So Vassa in the Night is a book in which my childhood and adulthood came together, where the images that Russian fairy tales imprinted on my mind when I was small helped me to understand the griefs and triumphs I witnessed as I grew older. It’s a book where the delirious energy of childhood fantasies meets an adult understanding of just how hard it is to become your best self, especially when everything seems to be against you. It’s a tribute to the myths and dreams I cherished as a small girl, and also to all the kids who are out there now, becoming heroes in whatever ways they can.
Vassa in the Night is on sale now.