Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with
Speaker 2: you our special guest Chris Pzech with us, an editor
Speaker 2: and author dedicated to helping other writers, fully believes that
Speaker 2: well rid words in Walt stories have always changed the
Speaker 2: world and that they will continue to do so. The
Speaker 2: latest book is called Becoming Baba Yaga. Chris, welcome to
Speaker 2: the program.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me. George.
Speaker 2: What is the Baba Yaga?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's such a fabulous question. So Baba Yaga is
Speaker 3: a folk tale story book which who has stories has
Speaker 3: been a giant telephone game over centuries and perhaps millennia
Speaker 3: of this evil crone who lives deep in the woods,
Speaker 3: who lives in a house that stands upon chicken legs,
Speaker 3: So of course her house can stand up and turn around,
Speaker 3: so you can never find her front door, or else
Speaker 3: can stand up and run away if she really doesn't
Speaker 3: want you to find her. But it's the word evil
Speaker 3: I want to explore, because so often she is put
Speaker 3: into this Disney caricature box of what an evil witch
Speaker 3: must look like. But she is so complex and she
Speaker 3: has some there we say life coaching amid her folk
Speaker 3: tales that are definitely worth exploring.
Speaker 2: Does this come primarily from Slavic and the Ukrainian folklore
Speaker 2: Slavic falklor.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm Ukrainian myself, so I've known Bobby Yaga for
Speaker 3: a very long time. Sometimes when people speak of her,
Speaker 3: they speak of her as a Russian witch. But really,
Speaker 3: if you look anywhere in Eastern Europe, there are little
Speaker 3: breadcrumbs of who this character is, what her legacy is,
Speaker 3: what her belief system is, all across that region. So
Speaker 3: you can really pinpoint her in about ten different countries
Speaker 3: in that region. But no, quite, there are no borders
Speaker 3: that exist for bob Yaga.
Speaker 2: Is there supposed to be an alter? You go to
Speaker 2: Baba Yaga a good one.
Speaker 3: That's the wonderful thing about her, because she is a
Speaker 3: force of darkness, but she always has this identity to
Speaker 3: her where if you come to her and you show
Speaker 3: her for specific character traits, which I love because this
Speaker 3: is kind of where the evolution and transformation come with her.
Speaker 3: If you come to her deep in the woods according
Speaker 3: to oli her stories, and you're showing her respect, and
Speaker 3: you're showing her that you have a kind heart, and
Speaker 3: you're showing her that you're a hard worker, and you're
Speaker 3: showing her that you can be brave. She can actually
Speaker 3: become almost a donor type fairy cod mother like character
Speaker 3: who can transform someone's life from miserable to so much better.
Speaker 3: And it's one of those aspects that I think is
Speaker 3: so fascinating, especially in this moment in modern history, where
Speaker 3: sometimes we have shadows that's around us. Sometimes we have darkness.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when you look around the world, it's terrifying, it's horrific.
Speaker 3: It's the darkness feels like every once in a while
Speaker 3: it is creeping in. But when you look at old
Speaker 3: world stories that have stuck around not only for generations,
Speaker 3: but for hundreds thousands of years, those stories exist for
Speaker 3: a reason, and Baba Yaga specifically reminds us that when
Speaker 3: there's darkness in the world, don't be afraid of it,
Speaker 3: because sometimes through that darkness and finding our way to
Speaker 3: endure through that darkness is where our greatest transformations exist.
Speaker 2: Of course, how did you become so knowledgeable about Baba Yaga?
Speaker 3: So she's a character I have known from just family
Speaker 3: bedtime stories since I was a young child, But because
Speaker 3: she is so ambiguous. Sometimes she is evil, sometimes she
Speaker 3: is good. Sometimes she falls into this trickster category. And
Speaker 3: she is so complex that her physicality changes between different stories,
Speaker 3: and just how she interacts with people changes. There's always
Speaker 3: a threat of she will eat you up for supper,
Speaker 3: which I mean as the best of storybook witches sometimes
Speaker 3: can have that threat, But there are so many different
Speaker 3: derivations of her. So I started studying her a long
Speaker 3: time ago. I think growing up in a household that
Speaker 3: was a mix of kind of contemporary American pop culture
Speaker 3: but also long held Ukrainian traditions. I'm first generation American
Speaker 3: on that side of my family. Hearing the dichotomy of
Speaker 3: belief systems and understandings and just cultures intrigued me. And
Speaker 3: I remember when I was a little kid. I was
Speaker 3: probably nine years old, and there was this conversation around
Speaker 3: the dinner table, and it was probably three different generations
Speaker 3: around the dinner table, family friends as well as family,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, this conversation sparked about witches
Speaker 3: and darkness. And this is coming from a generation, my
Speaker 3: grandparents generation who survived World War two and World War
Speaker 3: two in Ukraine. The story that is not often told
Speaker 3: I could actually tell you about that too. My most
Speaker 3: recent book, before Becoming Bobby Yaga, is actually a novel
Speaker 3: that is called The Bobby Yaga Mask that actually goes
Speaker 3: into World War two Ukrainian history. But anyway, I was
Speaker 3: as a child, I was sitting around the dinner table
Speaker 3: and the stories shifted to witches and Bobby Yaga, and
Speaker 3: I remember, as a nine year old child, standing up
Speaker 3: excusing myself as politely as I could, because at my grandparents'
Speaker 3: Ukrainian dinner table, one must always have the best of manners,
Speaker 3: as we all know from our grandparents. But I excuse myself,
Speaker 3: ran to my bedroom where I had one of those
Speaker 3: this is going to date me a little bit. I
Speaker 3: had a tape recorder with those many cassette tapes, and
Speaker 3: I ran and I got it, and I kind of
Speaker 3: kept it under my dinner napkin, and I sat back
Speaker 3: at the table very quietly, and I put my napkin
Speaker 3: on top of it, and I just recorded this conversation
Speaker 3: of all of my grandparents' friends discussing witches and folklore
Speaker 3: and beliefs. And I was just hooked from that moment.
Speaker 3: And the studies haven't really stopped.
Speaker 2: Would your family actually give you bedtime stories of this
Speaker 2: evil thing?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, So I grew up in a household where
Speaker 3: I think so many horrors had happened during World War two,
Speaker 3: tales of survival, because the Ukrainian World War II story, again,
Speaker 3: it's a story that's not often told, where you had
Speaker 3: forces from Russia coming from one direction, claiming trying to
Speaker 3: wipe away Ukrainian identity. You had Nazi Germany who was
Speaker 3: coming in on the other side, and you have Ukraine
Speaker 3: in the middle, who desperately just wants to be its
Speaker 3: own country, to have its own identity, to claim its
Speaker 3: own culture, and just say let us exist. Not getting
Speaker 3: into contemporary events on this conversation, but it's a familiar
Speaker 3: story and the horrors of freedom fighters and just survive
Speaker 3: will amid horrific things. These were stories that we heard
Speaker 3: around the dinner table, stories of survival and how to
Speaker 3: find food and witnessing terrible events. And maybe it was
Speaker 3: an old belief that it was one of those things
Speaker 3: that you told your family stories better understand not only
Speaker 3: each other and your blood and your strength of what
Speaker 3: you can get through, but also just to be prepared
Speaker 3: for absolutely anything. So Yes, there was no shortage or
Speaker 3: limitations of darkness or scary tales when I was a child.
Speaker 2: Wow, not that digress too much, but I have to
Speaker 2: ask you this. They say one of Putin's reasons for
Speaker 2: going into Ukraine was to try to rid it of
Speaker 2: Nazis that were still infiltrating Is there any truth to that.
Speaker 3: I'm going to stay away from contemporary events in this conversation,
Speaker 3: but I can just say that I have known a
Speaker 3: sense of Ukrainian pride, Ukrainian identity, and the beauty of
Speaker 3: arts and music and storytelling as a part of what
Speaker 3: it means to be Ukrainian for as long as I
Speaker 3: can remember. And there's such a strength of people and
Speaker 3: bravery of people that I think it's a very complex
Speaker 3: story that people should take some time to actually learn
Speaker 3: some history. And then when you start digging into the history,
Speaker 3: the answers to questions like what you just asked will
Speaker 3: become a little bit more clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty complicated, isn't it. Definitely back to Bob Yaga.
Speaker 2: Has it hurt anybody that you know of?
Speaker 3: Has Bobby Aga?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, I cannot say definitely not. Bobbioga is definitely a
Speaker 3: force that you could say her stories are out to terrify.
Speaker 3: Her stories are out to put a different lens on
Speaker 3: the world that you think you know right where you
Speaker 3: think that you might be comfortable, or again the terrors
Speaker 3: that you see around you. And when you look at
Speaker 3: old fairy tales, when you look at old folk tales,
Speaker 3: when you look at the origin of Bobby Yaga herself,
Speaker 3: her first written record was in seventeen fifty five, and
Speaker 3: that's her first known written record, and that was in
Speaker 3: a Russian and in that book there was a list
Speaker 3: of deities across the world, and so you had Jupiter
Speaker 3: was next to the relevant Slavic god, who is next
Speaker 3: to the relevant Norse god, and you had all of
Speaker 3: these different people who exist together. And then in this
Speaker 3: chart of gods and goddesses around the world, you had
Speaker 3: Bobby Yaga. And so in this first written record of her,
Speaker 3: she was not a storybook, which she was understood as
Speaker 3: a deity in that time. And so that's the first
Speaker 3: part of her intrigue is, Okay, we know her through storybooks,
Speaker 3: but she has this legacy of a deity. But then
Speaker 3: the more intriguing fact of it is there was this
Speaker 3: table of who were comparables the world over, and yet
Speaker 3: Baba Yaga stood alone. There was nobody across the world
Speaker 3: in this book that was the same as she was.
Speaker 3: This force of strength for women, this force of strength
Speaker 3: of preservation of the earth, this force of nature, understanding
Speaker 3: the cycles of life and death and transformation. And I
Speaker 3: think it is this idea of transformation for her that
Speaker 3: people really lean into today.
Speaker 2: Is she strictly folklore Chris? Or is she possibly real?
Speaker 3: Hm? So I like the idea of where do you
Speaker 3: stories come from? They come from somewhere deep within the
Speaker 3: emotions of humanity, the fears of humanity. When we look
Speaker 3: at Baba Yaga as a character again, we see this
Speaker 3: trail of deities, of who she may have once been,
Speaker 3: who she may still be. And you're finding all of
Speaker 3: these breadcrumbs of deities across about a thousand years of Europe,
Speaker 3: where we have deities of the earth, where there are
Speaker 3: traditions where it was forbidden to spit on the earth,
Speaker 3: because the spit on the earth was to spit on
Speaker 3: your mother. There was an idea of digging a hole
Speaker 3: in the earth and whispering into it. So this goddess
Speaker 3: of the worst Earth could hear your deepest secrets or
Speaker 3: greatest confessions and listen and respond to you. The idea
Speaker 3: of an old, terrifying woman on the edges of society.
Speaker 3: This is not a new idea. This is an idea
Speaker 3: that has been twisted and molded and shaped so much
Speaker 3: dependent on the teller of the tale. But when it
Speaker 3: comes to Baba Yaga and who who she is and
Speaker 3: who she has been, and the women who may have
Speaker 3: inspired her just as much as any traditions of deities,
Speaker 3: that's what is also intriguing in this conversation because who
Speaker 3: is it who tells the stories to our youth. It's
Speaker 3: not always the most active society who are sitting down
Speaker 3: with the children and telling their stories. So often, especially historically,
Speaker 3: it's the grandmothers who are telling the stories to the children.
Speaker 3: Because the grandmothers sometimes are having more time than the
Speaker 3: parents who are running this direction and that direction. And
Speaker 3: that is not a modern phenomenon. Parents are always doing
Speaker 3: their best to take care of the one hundred things
Speaker 3: that are necessary in life. But if you have the
Speaker 3: grandmothers who are the ones between generations telling the tales
Speaker 3: of this fearsome which Baba Yaga, there's some ownership in
Speaker 3: age and wisdom and strength and experience, and telling of
Speaker 3: small children and also adults alike, that you know what.
Speaker 3: The world can sometimes be scary. Sometimes it may feel
Speaker 3: as if you might be eaten for supper. Sometimes it
Speaker 3: feels that if you walk into the woods, someone might
Speaker 3: get you. If you are not being your best self,
Speaker 3: if you're not being respectful, if you're not being good hearted,
Speaker 3: if you're not being brave, if you're not being hardworking.
Speaker 3: It's a lesson from the grandmothers to the children that
Speaker 3: has passed down in countless ways. And thus we have
Speaker 3: Bobby Yaga today, and she's popping up in pop culture
Speaker 3: all over the place. In movies, she's in Goodness, She's
Speaker 3: in the John Wick series John Wick Keanu Reeves character,
Speaker 3: her name is Bobby Yaga, and she's popping up there.
Speaker 3: She's popping up in music, she's popping up in fiction.
Speaker 3: In the past decade, Bobby Yaga has emerged from the
Speaker 3: woods and popped up in the Western world, and so
Speaker 3: often she's this force of horror. But every once in
Speaker 3: a while there's a slightly deeper exploration where audiences sit
Speaker 3: back and go, who is this woman who is this witch,
Speaker 3: and there is where my explorations begin and I've so
Speaker 3: much deeper.
Speaker 2: Is she like the old hag syndrome in our culture?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, but she fights tooth and nail against every little
Speaker 3: bit of it. Sometimes in modern culture, an old woman
Speaker 3: is either terrifying or invisible, and Bobby Aga can lean
Speaker 3: into both stereotypes. Where you want to see terrifying, I
Speaker 3: can give you terrifying. This is actually something I played
Speaker 3: with in my novel, my last book, The Bobby Aga Mask.
Speaker 3: In that story I have, one of my characters is
Speaker 3: a ninety something grandmother who survived World War two Ukraine,
Speaker 3: and she said, before I die, I want to go
Speaker 3: see the old country. So she hops a fly to
Speaker 3: you Europe. She steps up the plane and she disappears.
Speaker 3: And thus we have the story of a wild goose
Speaker 3: chase across contemporary Eastern Europe. Of these two sisters, won
Speaker 3: a new mother and one a free spirit, shall we
Speaker 3: call her, on this wild goose chase finding their grandmother.
Speaker 3: But in the midst of it, they're uncovering their grandmother's history,
Speaker 3: their families, history, Ukrainian history and traditions. The part of
Speaker 3: that grandmother's disappearance and this is not giving away any plot.
Speaker 3: Is this concept of this woman who grew up knowing
Speaker 3: and believing in Bobby Yaga, not just as a storybook character,
Speaker 3: but as a force in the wood who was there
Speaker 3: to empower the world. This grandmother ends the Baba Yaga
Speaker 3: mask decides, you know what, the world is scary. The
Speaker 3: world is horrific. Haven't we all had that moment where
Speaker 3: we look around and say, the world is falling apart?
Speaker 3: So this grandmother and that novel says, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm going to do. I am going to scare the
Speaker 3: world to being a better place. I am going to
Speaker 3: take up the inspiration of Bobbiyaga and see what I
Speaker 3: can do here. And so I love that inspiration for
Speaker 3: a character in fiction. Of the world is horrific, maybe
Speaker 3: we need to scare it into being a better place.
Speaker 3: This is not the life strategy I'm discussing, but it's
Speaker 3: an interesting way to look at how folk tales and
Speaker 3: different belief systems have exist in human civilization for a
Speaker 3: very long time.
Speaker 2: What did the tales do for you as a child
Speaker 2: and then as you became an adult.
Speaker 3: Tales are very much a system of the world. They
Speaker 3: were written in so some of the Babbyaga tales, for example,
Speaker 3: the most famous one that audiences probably have ever heard
Speaker 3: of is called Vasilisa the Beautiful. So you have a story,
Speaker 3: and this one is such a echo of Cinderella, but
Speaker 3: you could argue it came earlier than Cinderella. But then
Speaker 3: you could also argue that there are Cinderella stories the
Speaker 3: world over, and it is Ragstrish's tales that exists in
Speaker 3: the hearts of humans for forever. But there is a
Speaker 3: story of a girl who she lived with her stepmother
Speaker 3: and stepsisters, except for the last fire goes out in
Speaker 3: their household. So this girl of Vasalisa is sent out
Speaker 3: into the woods to get fire back for their household
Speaker 3: because the only one who can access fire is the
Speaker 3: witch of the woods, Babba Yaga. So she goes to
Speaker 3: Bobby Yaga, and Bobby Yaga forces her to not just
Speaker 3: have the fire, but she forces her to prove herself
Speaker 3: worthy of eight guests. And again this is where there's
Speaker 3: such a similar formula and all of the in all
Speaker 3: of the tales that when especially when young women come
Speaker 3: to seek her, if they are respectful to her, if
Speaker 3: they prove themselves good hearted, if they prove themselves hard working,
Speaker 3: and if they prove themselves brave, Those four traits will
Speaker 3: enable an individual to conquer anything.
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