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Start giftingWe Were Witches
A Novel
Narrator
Ariel Gore
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Length
6 hours 19 minutes
Language
English
Buying into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself, gets on welfare rolls, and talks her way into college. But once she’s there, phallocratic narratives permeate every subject, and creative writing professors depend heavily on Freytag’s pyramid to analyze life.
So Ariel turns to a rich subcultural canon of resistance and failure, populated by writers like Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa, Tillie Olsen, and Kathy Acker.
Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother. She’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming strange women into passive citizenship. But even as the narrator struggles to graduate―often the triumphant climax of a dramatic plot―a question uncomfortably lingers. If you’re dealing with precarious parenthood, queer identity, and debt, what is the true narrative shape of your experience?
Ariel Gore is a journalist, teacher, and author of numerous books on parenting. She is the founding editor–publisher of Hip Mama, an Alternative Press Award–winning publication covering the culture and politics of motherhood. Her memoir Atlas of the Human Heart was a 2004 finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City won a Lambda Literary Award in 2010.
Ariel Gore is a journalist, teacher, and author of numerous books on parenting. She is the founding editor–publisher of Hip Mama, an Alternative Press Award–winning publication covering the culture and politics of motherhood. Her memoir Atlas of the Human Heart was a 2004 finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City won a Lambda Literary Award in 2010.
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Reviews
“A rewriting of every helpless princess fairy tale and a reclamation of every Scarlet Letter…We Were Witches is an absolute must-read.”
“Ariel…calculates and acts impulsively and makes strange and strong choices. And we are right there with her.”
“Gore tells her story with such verve and wit I missed my train stop reading it.”
“Everything you didn’t know you were allowed to want in a narrative.”
“Gore’s magic-infused narrative…is a moving account of a young writer and mother striving to claim her own agency and find her voice.”
“This book mimics the messy, discursive texture of memory—of life…Inventive and affecting.”
“A scathing indictment of a system that works against people who are poor and female as well as a piercing and wise look at one woman’s struggle to overcome it.”
“A triumphant body story. A singularly spectacular siren song.”
“We Were Witches seizes the shame and hurt internalized by young women and turns it into magic art and poetry. Ariel Gore’s writing is a diamond pentacle carved into a living heart, transforming singular experience into universal knowledge.”
“Drawing from myth, fairy tale, the wisdom of third wave literary icons, and the singular experiences of a queer single mama artist trying to survive the nineties, We Were Witches is its own genre, in its own canon. It moves with punk-rock grace and confidence, and I totally loved it.”
“Raw and truthful, painfully funny, inspiring of outrage, and alive with the wonder and magic of a feminist awakening. One single mom becoming woke, struggling, and triumphing on her own outsider terms, We Were Witches is a new feminist classic, penned by one the culture’s strongest authors at her most experimental and personal.”
“Both magical and punk rock—the way it takes traditional values and traditional story structure to task, the way Gore’s protagonist, Ariel, uses witchy intelligence to resist a system totally against her.”
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