Her skill at transforming writing clichés and well-worn cultural signifiers into fresh insights is alchemical. Nobody in the country uses more innovative nonfiction forms than Washuta.Ī fascinating magic trick of a memoir that illuminates a woman's search for meaning. A vibration that asks the body to listen, and rewards it for doing so. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life-TwinPeaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham-to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule.īracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists.Ī web of honest examination of self and context. In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning. Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits” of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Washuta's voice sears itself onto the skin.” -The New York Times Book Review A TIME, NPR, New York Public Library, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Entropy Best Book of the Year
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