The Tail of Emily Windsnap

The Tail of Emily Windsnap revolves around mermaids, presented as half-human, half-fish creatures who live in the sea and function like humans do on land. The term merfolk is derived from the old English “mere,” meaning “sea”—thus, folk of the sea. Kessler’s depictions of mermaids come close to ideas made popular by such modern retellings as the Walt Disney Studios adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” published in 1872 as part of The Complete Fairy Tales. In the Disney film, the main character (Ariel) longs for a life away from the sea and the restrictive life she knows. Though Emily Windsnap and the popular Disney movie share similarities, these depictions are far from the first cultural representations of merfolk. Going back hundreds of years, merfolk or similar creatures can be found in myths from around the globe, many of which focus specifically on mermaids. Mermaids were often associated with fertility or destruction (hence tales of sirens leading ships to their ruin), both of which called upon a mermaid’s beauty as a powerful force.

Mermaid mythology is as rich and varied as the cultures of the world. One of the earliest mermaid tales comes from Syria, circa 1000 BCE. In this tale, the goddess Atargatis casts herself into the sea to take the form of a fish, but the gods there refuse to let her give up her beauty, thus introducing the concept of mermaids as human women with tails instead of legs. In Africa, mermaids were known as Mami Wata (“Mother of the Waters”) and were characterized by a gender-fluid nature. Mami Wata were protectors of the water and, following the rise of the slave trade in the 1600s, gained a reputation as sinkers of slave ships, thus giving their people a chance to find their way home. Greece and Rome introduced the concept of sirens—creatures like mermaids who made it their mission to sink human ships. Kessler uses this concept in her Emily Windsnap books, where siren is a career choice for mermaids, thus linking the two creatures to their shared beginnings.

Merfolk are also an important aspect of global culture today. In line with the genderfluid Mami Wata of Africa, merfolk have become a symbol of pride and hope among transgender and genderfluid youth. As depicted by many merfolk tales, including The Tail of Emily Windsnap, merfolk appear as fish from the waist down, meaning they cannot be assigned a gender based on biological characteristics. A mermaid’s human half may exhibit specific gender traits, but without defining reproductive organs, merfolk have grown to represent appearances without labels. For this reason, Mermaids UK, an organization founded in 1995 to support transgender youth, adopted the mermaid as its symbol. Due to the lack of identifying characteristics and a mermaid’s ability to transform its shape, mermaids offer the empowering message that assigned gender or biological gender is irrelevant a person’s identity. Though The Tail of Emily Windsnap does not explore this connection, Kessler’s protagonist repeatedly tells those around her that she isn’t ashamed to be who she is—whether mermaid or human—thus offering a similar message to young readers struggling with their identity and sense of self.