cover image Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power

Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power

Pam Grossman. Gallery, $16.99 hardcover (288p) ISBN 978-1-982100-70-4

Grossman (What Is A Witch), host of the Witch Wave podcast, analyzes archetypes, stereotypes, and characterizations of witches, real and fictional, before making the case that all women should embrace this “ultimate feminist icon” in her fun study. Grossman begins by debunking or contextualizing common beliefs about witches—such as that witches are mainly teenaged outcasts—before offering feminist analyses of an array of fictional characters, including the Wicked Witch of the West (here viewed as an independent woman in a male dominated world), and a superb section which explains the witchcraft throughout Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1926 feminist classic Lolly Willowes. Grossman then turns to real-world accounts of witches and their antagonists, among them Abigail Williams, who ignited the Salem witch trials, and failed 2010 Delaware senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, who was ridiculed for videos in which she admitted that she “dabbled in witchcraft.” There are a few uneven memoir passages, in which Grossman writes of how she came to identify as a witch and practice witchcraft, as well as blunt political diatribes against Republicans, but these are less successful than her analyses. Nevertheless, feminist readers will be pleased by Grossman’s deconstruction of witch clichés. [em](June) [/em]