The "Endicott Kids" Page

by Terri Windling,
with art by Meg Fox

    

Despite the enormous wealth in Western countries, too many of our children still grow up without adequate food, health care, education, or the simple guarantee of a safe bed to sleep in at night. Physical, psychological and sexual violence against children happens behind closed doors in all neighborhoods, all kinds of families, rich and poor alike. Kids need our help to open the gates to a healthy, humane, creative adult life.

At Endicott, we've long been active on behalf of abused, homeless, and at-risk kids -- not only by supporting mythic art that addresses these issues, but also by financially supporting children's organizations ranging from crisis centers to arts & cultural programs for Native American children in Tucson, Arizona (Endicott's home city). 

We're a nonprofit organization, so all money we raise (through this website and other projects) beyond the modest amounts needed to cover our costs is donated to children's charities. Right now, our "Endicott Kids" charity is Casa de los Niños in Tucson, a shelter for abandoned, runaway, abused, and neglected children of all ages, races, and backgrounds, from tiny babies to teenagers. The Casa also provides health care aid and counseling for troubled families, and sponsor child abuse prevention outreach programs in the Tucson community. You can learn more (and donate directly to the Casa) by visiting their website.

Book sales for the Endicott kids:

You support our children's charity every time you buy books recommended on the Endicott/JoMA site by following the book's link back to Amazon.com. This tags you as an Endicott customer, and we receive a small percentage of the sale.

If we haven't got a link to the book, CD, or DVD that you want to purchase, you can still be an Endicott customer by entering Amazon through the link below. This nets a smaller percentage than the directly-linked books, but every bit helps and goes to a good cause. Please bookmark this page for all your Amazon purchases -- and help us to help kids in crisis.

Enter Amazon here.

Fairy tales and the healing journey:

        

Myths and fairy tales can play an important role in overcoming childhood trauma. Just as the symbolic figures in nightly dreams reflect the realities of our waking life, the symbols to be found in fairy tales and myths (which are the collective dreams of entire cultures) provide useful metaphors for grappling with the hard truths of our existence. These old tales have much to say about heroism; about how one finds the courage to fight and prevail against adversity.  They are tales of children abandoned in the woods, of daughters who are handed poisoned apples or pressured to enter their fathers' beds, of sons betrayed and brothers be-spelled, or who hack off their own sisters' limbs.

The old tales, which were often dark and brutal, were not considered mere children's stories at all -- not until the 20th century, when the pendulum of adult literary fashion swung sharply toward novels of strict realism, and oral tales (associated with the lower classes, and with women) were banished to the nursery. At that point the tales were cleaned up, simplified, and watered-down for children's ears, so that many of the fairy tales we know today are but pale copies of the originals.

In the older versions of fairy tales, the Just often found a way to prevail, and the Wicked generally received their comeuppance - but the stories reveal much more than a simple formula of abuse and retribution. The trials our heroes encountered in their quests illustrated the process of transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from a maimed state into wholeness, from passivity to action. It's this transformational subtext that gives true fairy tales their particular power: not as a quaint escape from the harsh realities of modern life, but in their symbolic portrayal of all the dark and bright life has to offer.

Today, many writers, artists, performers, philosophers and psychologists are returning to the world's oldest stories, finding much of value in them with which to address the complex issues of our age. The books, stories, essays, poems, and media arts recommended on this page address the complex subject of childhood in the same ways our distant ancestors did: by telling stories, and using those tales to move us, enlighten us, change us.

The haunting collage art on this page is by the multi-media artist and performer Meg Fox, who makes use of fairy tale imagery to explore themes of childhood trauma and the healing process. To see more of her work, visit the Meg Fox Art website, the For the Sake Of website, and the Healing Through Literary, Visual, and Performance Art blog.

The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors:

             
This anthology contains fiction for adult readers addressing the dark side of childhood, child abuse, and the road to healing. The book includes fiction, poetry and nonfiction by writers including Lynda Barry, Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Patricia A. McKillip, Lisel Mueller, Joanna Russ, Anne Sexton, Delia Sherman, Will Shetterly, Midori Snyder, Ellen Steiber, Peter Straub, Jane Yolen and many others. Published by Tor Books in 1995, the book placed on the short-list for the James Tiptree Jr. Award.

"As the editor’s own memoir-cum-afterword makes clear, she has herself survived a perilous journey, ultimately establishing herself as an artist, editor, and anthologist in an environment so far removed from her childhood experience that she might as well have emigrated from another planet The Armless Maiden is an exploration, an extremely ambitious use of the fantastic for the most serious of literary purposes, to illuminate the human heart."   — The Philadelphia Inquirer

"These fairy tales, ‘new tales spun from the threads of the old,’ plumb the dangers, the pain, the way back to life."   — Feminist Bookstore News

The Importance of Stories,
and the work of Charles de Lint:

               

Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn’t trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he’d been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill.

I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class... More>>>

Art Prints:

I created the first painting below, "True Friends," for Endicott's 20th Anniversary. The second painting, "In the Shadows," was created for Tori Amos's 2008 Calendar, which raises money for RAINN (the Rape and Incest Survivors National Network).

      

                                  True Friends

 

                                From the Shadows

Signed copies of both prints can be purchased here, with proceeds donated to JoMA and the Endicott Kids. (Please note that the prints themselves do not contain the copyright line that appears on the Web images above.)

                                                  -- Terri Windling, Autumn 2007