Nothing is comfortable in these essays, which labor through the muddy waters of intergenerational trauma, imperialism, capitalism and misogyny, using popular culture (“ Twin Peaks,” Tarot cards, the video game “ Red Dead Redemption 2”) as navigational tools. “Do you think this is a good book? How do you know?” Elissa Washuta asks in one of the footnotes of the essays collected in “ White Magic.” “Is it because you compared it to other books? I do want to make you uncomfortable if you’re accustomed to being the ideal audience, your wants prioritized.” Later she asks, “what is your tolerance for ambiguity?” She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life-Twin Peaks, 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.If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. 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 Reviewīracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists. A TIME, NPR, New York Public Library, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Entropy Best Book of the Year
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