Riding the Red / Red Rider

I wrote "Riding the Red" while attending the Clarion Writing Workshop in 1995. It was Pat Murphy's week to teach. One day, she asked one of us to tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood from memory. Bruce Glassco did it. Then Pat challenged us to come up with stories that refreshed familiar fantasy tropes. She handed out tropes on folded pieces of paper. Mine turned out to be "the monster with the heart of gold." I had brought a phrase with me to Clarion, written in my notebook. It was "riding the red." It was something that my dreaming brain had kicked up one morning years before as I was walking to the bus stop on my way to work. At the time, I had no idea what it meant, except that I knew it would have something to do with menstruation (like the phrase "being on the rag"). That afternoon at Clarion, after the critiquing session, I was trying to figure out how to write a story that would meet Pat's challenge. I think I already knew that I wanted my "monster with the heart of gold" to be the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Poor wolfie, so maligned. But I hadn't a clue how to go about it until I looked through my notebook, hoping to find an idea I could use. The phrase "riding the red" sprang out at me. That was the first time I realised that it could be a play on the phrase "little Red Riding Hood." I started to write. I had no idea what I was doing. I got good and stuck halfway through the story. I took it to Pat, who read it and started asking me the questions about it that I'd been afraid to ask myself. I don't even remember the questions now. I only remember that I finished the rest of the story in a rush, and that when I was done, I had a feeling it was a good story. (In those days, I couldn't tell.) When the story was critiqued a few days later, it turned out that I had been right; it was a good story. I sold it soon after leaving Clarion, to Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, for their anthology Black Swan, White Raven, AvonNova Books, 1997.

In 2001, CBC Radio broadcast a version of my short story "Riding the Red," which I performed along with jazz artist William Sperandei, who composed and played an original score for the piece.

Here's a link to the full text of the story, published under a Creative Commons license.

I wrote "Red Rider" to submit to "Tellin' It Like It Is," a chapbook of monologues for black actors for which Djanet Sears was soliciting submissions. She accepted "Red Rider," and "Tellin' It Like It Is" was released in by the Playwrights' Union of Canada. "Red Rider is a nation language iteration of "Riding the Red." Someone -- I can't remember who -- once argued with me that it wasn't a version of "Riding the Red," but a story in its own right. Here's an excerpt from Red Rider:

She don't hearken to me no more, not like she used to. If I tell her once I tell one thousand times: daughter, you must teach that pickney the facts of life before is too late; but no, I old, and is fe her daughter, is she going raise her, thank you please, Mother.

So I try to tell the girl child myself: listen, Sweetness; come listen to your Granny. You growing up, yes? Starting to smell yourself? Them firm, round bubbies, that behind hard and high like two ripe maami apple in a crocus bag? More time now, you going be riding the red, and if you don't look smart, next stop is Brer Tiger house, and Master Puss, him too love the smell of that blood, oh yes.