"Fairy-tale studies has needed this book for a long time. With meticulous historical and narrative analysis, Kimberly J. Lau lays out a consummate reckoning of racism in the European tale tradition. The unmarked, naturalized, inevitable whiteness of the tales is thoroughly debunked. This is literary litigation at its finest. A world of assumptions unmasked by a scholar who is also an intrepid investigator working at the highest level of commitment to giving us new truths about the old stories that still shape our worldview."?Kay Turner, coeditor of Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms (Wayne State University Press), and founder of the What a Witch project "In eye-opening ways, Specters of the Marvelous: Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale does for fairy tales what Ebony Elizabeth Thomas's The Dark Fantastic did for fantasy and Isiah Lavender III's Race in American Science Fiction did for science fiction. We do not have to agree with every one of Kimberly J.

Lau's interpretations, but it is impossible after reading this carefully researched book to unsee the workings of racial ideologies and representations in foundational European literary collections of fairy tales, and it is clear how insisting on the power of non-Euro-American wonder genres counters that history?and matters today. This distinctive contribution to viewing fairy-tale history and intersectionality is a must-read in fairy-tale studies."?Cristina Bacchilega, professor emerita, University of Hawaii at M?noa, and coeditor of Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies (Wayne State University Press).