In Josh Russell’s Suburban Folktales, the humdrum ennui of housewives and suburbanites is enfolded an old logic, a folk logic. Princesses home birth babies in their sleep, passers-by home birth diminutive duplicates on the sidewalk, and pregnant queens keep company with neoliberal birds. Kings text their daughters. Everyone already has cancer. Everybody has a complaint. But who reigns over the suburbs? Who will repair the storm damage? Who will purchase dough enough to make a man? Formed from the lineage of Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, Russell’s stories suggest that even quotidian cares are subject to the strange and wondrous.
