Becoming dangerous Witchy femmes, queer conjurers, and magical rebels

Book - 2019

"Edgy and often deeply personal, the twenty-one essays collected here come from a wide variety of writers. Some identify as witches, others identify as writers, musicians, game developers, or artists. What they have in common is that they've created personal rituals to summon their own power in a world that would prefer them powerless. Here, they share the rituals they use to resist self-doubt, grief, and depression in the face of sexism, slut shaming, racism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression"--

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Subjects
Genres
Essays
Published
Newburyport, MA : Weiser Books, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC 2019.
Language
English
Other Authors
Kristen J. Sollée (writer of foreword)
Physical Description
xxi, 294 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9781578636709
  • Foreword
  • Introduction
  • Notes from the Editors
  • Content Warnings
  • Unfuckable
  • Trash-Magic: Signs & Rituals for the Unwanted
  • Uncensoring My Ugliness
  • Femme as in Fuck You; Fucking with the Patriarchy One Lipstick Application at a Time
  • Before I Was A Woman, I Was a Witch
  • Undressing My Heart
  • Garden
  • Reddit, Retin-A, and Resistance: An Alchemist's Guide to Skincare
  • The Future Is Coming for You
  • My Witch's Sabbath of Short Skirts, Long Kisses, and BDSM
  • Buzzcut Season
  • The Harpy
  • Fingertips
  • Red Glitter
  • Touching Pennies, Painting Nails
  • Ritual in Darkness
  • Gayuma
  • Pushing Beauty Up Through the Cracks
  • Ritualising My Humanity
  • Simulating Control
  • I Am, Myself, a Body of Water
  • Contributors
  • Acknowledgements
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this uneven yet bold collection of essays, 21 authors explore how they "resist the onslaught of a world of irrational happenings" by performing personal rituals that incorporate magic. Each essay is by someone who considers themselves marginalized and responding to a culture that "has attempted to cast a banishing spell" on them. Highlights include "Trash Magic" by Miranda Elizabeth, a self-described "sick mad crip borderline witch" who tweaks tarot readings and crystal rituals to suit the needs of her "disabled perspective" and Avery Edison's "Before I Was a Woman, I Was a Witch," which details Avery's discovery of a witch kit as a teenager. A common thread is the subversion of conventional feminine beauty, such as in Catherine Hernandez's "Femme as in Fuck You" in which she writes of taking intentionally ugly photos to reclaim her sense of beauty after an accident that left her scarred, and merritt k's "Total Mood Killer," about how she fashions her nails for peak scariness, "sharp enough to easily scratch skin-maybe draw blood." Powerfully intimate and angry yet hopeful, these narratives will appeal to "magickal practitioners" looking for new examples of how others have dealt with oppression. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved