Thoughtful, engaging, and fresh: a welcome addition to the annals of women’s spirituality.
A professional witch recounts the trials she endured in finding her vocation.
That a contemporary witch would quote Starhawk quoting Doreen Valiente in an epigram will come as little surprise to students of the history of women’s spirituality. The former is an ecofeminist who has played a vital role in reimagining goddess worship for the modern age. The latter was instrumental in shaping Wicca, a mid-20th-century reiteration of English witchcraft. That this quotation is followed by a line from Hélène Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa” is a bit more surprising. Taken together, these epigrams offer an illuminating introduction to Yates Garcia and her work. A seventh-generation Californian, the author has made a name—and a remunerative career—for herself as the “Oracle of California.” She co-hosts a podcast called Strange Magic, she has more than 27,000 followers on Instagram, and, in 2017, she talked with Tucker Carlson about her magical efforts to bind Donald Trump from doing harm. It would be wrong, though, to dismiss Yates Garcia as a dilettante cashing in on the current interest in witches. Her mother is a practicing witch and raised the author within her own tradition, a mix of Unitarian Universalist feminist theology, neopaganism, and political activism. While Yates Garcia’s account of her own magical coming-of-age includes mystical experiences and glimpses of rituals she has crafted, it is also a forceful critique of capitalism and patriarchal culture. Her philosophy of witchcraft emphasizes collective action and social justice. But this is not a manifesto. It’s a tale of adventure, a heroine’s journey to find her own power. Along the way, she chronicles her encounters with fairies, monsters of various kinds, and at least one demon lover. Even though “the forces of patriarchal authority have destroyed our stones, our caves, our temples, our cathedrals…the Goddess is being reborn.”
Thoughtful, engaging, and fresh: a welcome addition to the annals of women’s spirituality.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-6305-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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