SUFFER A WITCH

A woman’s word.

McCullough, a playwright and children’s and young adult book author, offers a raw recounting of sexual abuse along with impassioned reflections about women “accused, coerced, convicted, executed” during vicious witch hunts. Her memoir, written in verse, is interwoven with prose letters—some to accusers, such as teenage girls “caught up in the feeling of having power.” Others to the accused—Joan of Arc; Bridget Bishop, the first woman executed as a witch in Salem; and even a 4-year old child. McCullough was a sophomore in high school when the older, married youth pastor in her church singled her out for attention—and soon, sex. She calls him Brett, a reminder of the Supreme Court Justice accused of sexual assault during his confirmation hearings. As Brett became increasingly controlling and demanding, McCullough felt trapped and powerless. Seeing her body as something made “for someone else’s / amusement,” she developed an eating disorder, trying to starve herself into a child’s size. In college, as a volunteer sexual assault crisis counselor, she learned the legal meaning of consent, sexual assault, and rape, and she mustered the courage to confide her secret. Yet her efforts to find justice repeatedly were frustrated: Her father, a pastor, had affairs all through his marriage, and, even when McCullough’s older sister warned him about Brett’s behavior, he refused to act. After one affair cost her father his job, he went on to head a seminary; her abuser moved on to youth pastor positions at other churches. Her efforts to pursue a criminal case went nowhere. McCullough fictionalized the life of 17th-century painter Artemesia Gentileschi, raped by her art tutor, in her debut book Blood Water Paint (2018); this memoir serves as a moving sequel.

Stark testimony of hard-won survival.