Break Your Glass Slippers: Cinderella Falls Short in Delivering Feminist Poetry

Break Your Glass Slippers by Amanda Lovelace

Genres: Poetry, Contemporary, Feminism

Pages: 162

Format: eBook

My Rating: 🥿🥿

I picked up this book hoping to find some inspiring and empowering poems that would challenge the traditional narratives of fairy tales and offer a fresh perspective on womanhood. Instead, I found a bland and repetitive collection of clichés, and a lot of trigger warnings, that barely scratched the surface of feminism and poetry.

The book retells the story of Cinderella in the form of a collection of poems about a young woman who struggles with body image, self-esteem, and toxic relationships and her fairy godmother who tries to offer her advice and encouragement.

This retelling of the classic fairy tale delivers strong feminist messages like self-love and self-respect; however, the execution of the book is a bit disappointing with the repetitive and simplistic collection of words.

The main problem with this book is that it lacks real poetry, depth, and creativity. The poems are mostly short and simple sentences that are broken into lines without any rhyme, with so little variation in tone, style, or structure, that sound like cliché quotes from Instagram or Pinterest.  The fact that the content of many of this book’s pages is only one line is a bit cringy, to be honest.

For example, one of the poems reads:

At several points, the book just focuses on fatphobia and self-acceptance, which is a good message; indeed, but it’s not the only issue that women face. I didn’t relate so much to it anyway, and I was more expecting it to deal with a diversity of women’s experiences and identities, but it failed me.

The following poems are a glimpse of that:

Part of me wanted to like this book so bad, but the poems are so bland, and I couldn’t help but find myself getting bored. I still enjoyed the illustrations and some poems included like the following one:

The book is okay; it’s not good and it’s not bad. I liked the concept of Cinderella not waiting for a prince, instead she’s waiting for herself, and I liked the fairy godmother offering her advice and encouragement to break free from the expectations of others and to embrace her own worth.

The book may appeal to some readers who are looking for a quick and easy read that offers some affirmation and validation. But for me, it wasn’t enough. I wanted more from this book, more substance, more creativity.

Overall, Break Your Glass Slippers fell short of my expectations. It felt like a wasted opportunity to explore the potential of feminist fairy tales and poetry.