Memoir: Witches of America, Alex Mar

Witches of America

Alex Mar

ISBN: 9780374291372

Read January 6, 2016

Hoooo boy is this one causing controversy.

I'm not religious, nor am I religiously affiliated, but I have a perpetual curiosity about wicca and witchcraft that would probably be considered religious interest - if I weren't an incurable skeptic.

This book (out right before Halloween, natch) is right up my alley - this "journalist" is religiously-raised, over-intellectual, self-critical, endlessly obsessed with appearance (at least I'm a makeup artist and costumer, so I have an excuse), skeptical but emotionally and spiritually passionate, heir to lots of christian guilt and mental baggage, afraid of sensation and of being "in the moment," and yet simultaneously intensely curious and covetous of having overwhelming (spiritual?) experiences.  Her work on a video documentary of American mystical spiritual paths led her to realize that this particular sub-culture/counter-culture of practicing wiccans, pagans, druids and others would make an excellent subject for a book.  (Also I think she ended up with a sort of lifestyle crush on Morpheus, who appears from all accounts to have an amazingly magnetic personality.)

Using her contacts from the documentary film, Mar slowly becomes a part of the pagan community, always reminding people that she's writing a book.  She half-heartedly tries the anthro approach for a little bit, but that's just not her style, and she manages to convince herself (and, importantly, the community she's joining) at regular points along the way that despite the book, she really is personally interested in discovering if there really is anything to this world of spells and chanting and invoking goddesses and gods.   So she "goes native."

Now the book is out, and in it she explores only three traditions in any depth (eclectic Wiccans are immediately passed on because they're "too eclectic" - well, what did you expect? and Dianic Wiccans are just too seriously 2nd wave stridently feminist and woman-worshipping for someone with Mar's obsession with good/bad female forms and social appropriateness, and she never even thinks about Druidry as far as I can tell).  The trio ends up as Andersonian Feri (specifically the BlackHeart strain), Pagan rockstar Morpheus Ravenna's (at the time of Mar's research) growing Coru Priesthood, and New Orleans' developing O.T.O. temple.  

Oddly enough, none of these are really what I would think of as "traditional" American witchcraft or wicca practices, but what the hell ever - those are the connections Mar ended up with, so that's what she's investigating.  What is really interesting is that post publication, the Coru, and Morpheus by extension, rescinded their prior approval for Mar's book (with some harsh words about intent not matching actions), and Mar's Feri teacher has also expressed a sense of betrayal at her own portrayal.  The O.T.O. hasn't said anything, but I would be shocked if they felt it necessary.  In addition, Mar's less than entirely glowing portrayal of two major pagan events seems to have personally pissed off just about every witch in the entire country.  Balancing this outrage from the pagan community is a series of glowing recommendations from the mainstream press, and lots of positive acknowledgement from other powerhouse literary figures.

So what gives?  First off, the main issue I see from the Pagans is that Mar violated consent by recording (or transcribing from memory) quite a few personal conversations without explicit permission, and by writing about ecstatic rituals and shared sacred spaces in the first place, but secondly for writing about them in a very intellectual, somewhat sardonic, detached journalistic record-keeping manner.  As a note (spoilers?) Mar did not end up continuing her Feri practice, and she is currently carefully vague about her present involvement with the O.T.O, - this might help explain why so many in the community felt personally betrayed or violated by the portrayals of events and people (or of themselves) found in the book.  There are several smaller ritual events depicted, and Mar's sense of alienation and shaky self-image makes these events a bit warped in the recounting.  I don't get the impression that Mar TRIES to be hurtful or to exaggerate, but her personality (which she is constantly referencing and using as a narrative scaffolding) makes that nearly impossible to achieve.  Many of her comments ARE hurtful, or they read as uncomfortably exploitative or overdramatized.

Some things I wonder after reading: 

Was she faking her spiritual journey the whole time? (I truly don't THINK so, but then I see a lot of myself in her personality, and I very much understand that nearly impossible-to-shake desire to quantify and intellectualize experiences, and to second-guess and quarterback the "validity" of my involvement in communities.  Other reviewers who were actually there, or who knew her, do question whether she was actually ever a true "seeker.")

Was she perhaps a "spiritual tourist" and only interested in spirituality as long as it was easy and didn't require self-abnegation or hard emotional work, thus betraying the community through her dilettantism?  (Does that actually matter?)

Are the conversations and events revealed in the book consensually obtained?  (This last question becomes really interesting when considered in light of an interesting chapter about "Jonathan" the corpse-stealing necromancer.  Mar gets very philosophical here, and also in a subsequent disturbingly adoring chapter about Morpheus and her desire for her corpse to be left for the carrion birds) about the concepts of consent and of intent, and of magical purpose, and of violating people's autonomy and free will.  Perhaps a spate of guilt - a textual attempt to claim: at least I'm not as bad as this guy is?) 

Was any ritual secret or magical information disclosed that she either promised or implied that she would hold secret?  (Mar appears to have a very sincere belief that ONLY the very specific "secrets" of initiations (one from Blackheart Feri, and one from O.T.O. - both involving the names of gods) are off limits, and cheerfully (perhaps even licentiously?) reveals all sorts of other lurid details (again in a self-deprecating and intellectually-reserved way, distancing herself from the events even as she participates in them), shoving the curtains wide open about the specific and sometimes explicit activities that comprise circles, rituals, and initiations.  This attitude (and to be frank, the writing style) also seems to account for much of the vitriol from the community, and one hopes that either Mar's oaths were truly that literally specific, or that there truly is no magic for these very angry and betrayed people to invoke against her.)

Overall, a really interesting book about one flawed person's lurching journey along the borderlines of spiritual awakenings in a marginalized and deeply distrustful private community, made even more interesting by what the fallout reveals about that community, and about Mar's methodology in researching and in obtaining full and active consent from the people she interacted with.  One senses that her naively optimistic comment in the acknowledgements about an essay updating readers on her contacts' continuing lives is going to be a haunting memory, and one I predict will vanish from any re-printed editions.  

  

2015 Review Round-Up: Graphic Novel: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, Tony Cliff

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
Tony Cliff
ISBN: 9781596438132
Read December 2015 for Graphic Novel Book Club

Previously reviewed here.

All of that remains true, and to add that the sequel is offically named and release-dated:
Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling
out March 8 2016
(yay we're finally in the same year as the release Oh MY God I've waited FOREVER!!!)

2015 Review Round-Up: YA Fantasy: The Girl with Ghost Eyes, M. H. Boroson

The Girl With Ghost Eyes
M. H. Boroson
ISBN: 9781940456362
Haunting story of a magical Chinatown during the Chinese Exclusion Act days.
Read December 2015

I'm torn.  I enjoyed this story, but once I figured out the author was male, it made me feel just a little bit squicky.  There's a lot to unpack here in terms of cultural and gender roles, and internalized racism and sexism, and the juxtaposition of a very traditional YA sort of tentative girl-power heroine of color with a white male author was a little offputting.  I'm not sure if that says bad things about me, or about our culture, to be totally honest, because the book was really quite good, and the Author's Note seemed to indicate that care was taken with the language and the customs represented.

All that aside, this was a rollicking good ghost story, and I really enjoyed every minute of it.  The nasty creepy ghosties, the relentless focus on "face" and reputation, the tensions between the old ways and the new, between China and America, between folkways and revolvers, all made for a tense and exciting story.  Characters were vibrant, the plot was juicy and twisty without being unnecessarily convoluted, and our main character was flawed, desperate, and resourceful.  Also I want to be a Buddist were-tiger in my next role-playing game, because YES PLEASE.

Fascinating, interesting, and a rocking good read from start to finish.

2015 Review Round-Up: Juvenile Graphic Novel: Baba Yaga's Assistant, Marika McCoola & Emily Carroll

Baba Yaga's Assistant
Marika McCoola, illustrated by Emily Carroll
ISBN: 9780763669614
Read December 2015
Gruesome but light-hearted romp through a magical forest outside the modern world.

Her grandmother was her only comfort after her mother died - her botanist father was distant and didn't understand her.  Grandmother would tell her stories of her own childhood, when she braved the terrors of Baba Yaga with her own mother's doll to help her.  When grandmother passes on, and her father starts eating dinner with a new date - one with a bratty child at that, Masha knows just what to do.  She snatches up her matryoshka dolls, snips out the classified ad; "Assistant Needed ASAP... Enter Baba Yaga's house to apply." and heads into the forest.  From there on, we're into a madcap magical adventure where Masha (with a little help from Grandmother, and perhaps some from Baba Yaga herself, not that she'd ever tell) Masha learns that she really does have a place in the world, and even finds it in her heart to rescue the bratty maybe-eventually-little-stepsister.

So fun, and so subversive.  Loved it.  Reminded of Nimona, and of Ms Marvel, and of the Hildafolk stories, where the normal mundane and the utterly magical are just a stones throw apart, but no one in either world seems to notice or care.

2015 Review Round-Up: Fantasy Novella: Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente

Six-Gun Snow White
Catherynne M. Valente
ISBN: 9781481444729
Sets Snow White in the American West, with a side-plot giving the Wicked Queen actual motivation.
Read December 2015

This was an interesting and powerful retelling, and I finished it off quickly.  I loved the addition of the sub-plot that gave the stepmother/wicked queen an actual motive for Snow's heart, and the interesting twisty development that ensued.  I thought that the "six-gun" motif was undertilised and somewhat forgotten as the story progressed, and especially the detail of the gemstones seemed to fall by the wayside.  Likewise the ending of the story felt a bit rushed, and the epilogue was peculiar.  I had the oddest feeling that the story beforehand, all wild west and openly magical and folkloric, was the reality, and that the glimpse of modern life with professors and physics and apartments was the fantasy, all hazy and unreal.  It was the strangest sensation of disjointed impressions I've ever gotten from a story that I liked.

Despite all that, it was a glorious magical (grim, depressing, hellish) world to visit for a short while, and Snow was a captivating protagonist to follow.

Tuesday Storytime: International Festival - Italy! Pizza Party

We took a brief break from our wintry books to participate in our county-wide international festival; we're celebrating all things Italian for these two months, and it was requested that at least one of the programs at every location be thematically matched to the festival at some point.  Our book club is already enthusiastically participating, as are many other community partners, so I wanted to make sure our storytime was a team player as well.

We (along with most of the other storytimes in the system) decided that a "pizza party" would be the easiest age-appropriate way to incorporate the festival into our routine, not least because finding age-appropriate and storytime-appropriate books about Italy proved quite difficult for this age group.  The slightly older kids had it easy with Strega Nona, but you try getting a not-quite-two-year old to sit through Strega Nona, and then two more books as well?  Not for me.

Pizza at Sally's  
Monica Wellington (Apple Farmer Annie)
ISBN: 0525477152
Sally's Pizzeria is downtown, illustrated with a strange mix of collage and flat line-art.

Sally grows tomatoes in the community garden, and gets her cheese from the cheese shop next door, and she spends all day (there is a clock face in the top corner of most pages, showing the day's progression) preparing the ingredients and making pizza for her customers.  Short, factual, and peppy language.  A perfect introduction to the concept of making pizza, with a recipe in the back.


Pizza Pat
Rita Golden Gelman, illustrated by Will Terry
ISBN: 0679991344
In the vein of "This is the house that Jack built..." with really lovely illustrations, and great language.

The language on this is fabulous.  Another one of the dreaded "leveled readers" (this one is a STEP into Reading book) I love to show that they aren't necessarily all joy-killing slogs.  Here we have delightful rhymes: "This is the cheese, all white and sloppy, that topped the sausages, spicy and choppy, that sat on the sauce, all gooey and gloppy, that covered the dough, all stretchy and floppy..." heavenly to read.  The illustrations are sweet and filled with color and movement and intention.  There is a twist ending (mice steal the pizza from poor Pat) that might be a bit of a downer for sensitive listeners, especially since the final illustration is drenched in pathos, but most will simply think the fat pizza-stealing mice are funny.

Secret Pizza Party
Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri (Dragons Love Tacos)
ISBN: 9780803739475
A pizza-loving raccoon has a brilliant plan to get access to humans' pizzas.

Poor raccoon.  He keeps getting chased away from the pizza by people with brooms.  He can't even forage in the pizzeria trash without getting shooed away.  He has a great plan tho - he'll host a SECRET PIZZA PARTY!  Mainly to avoid the brooms, but also because secrets are awesome!  His plans are not thought through very well (his escape route in particular needs help - he's found all the broom-related locations in town, in addition to broom-wielding robots!) but he does manage to get back home for a sad little quiet furtive "party" until he sees the giant pizza bash next door, and hatches a new daring plan.  I got a lot of strange looks from the grown-ups, but the kids loved it to pieces, and I always enjoy reading something openly narrative and a little off-kilter.

    

2015 Review Round-Up: Nonfiction: Too Much of a Good Thing, Lee Goldman

Too Much of a Good Thing: How Four Key Survival Traits are Now Killing Us
Lee Goldman, MD
ISBN: 9780316236812
Interesting study of big systemic medical problems, and how they're actually ancient survival traits.
Read December 2015

Here's the four, because I know you're curious.
1) Obesity: fat craving and hoarding.  We used to need all those calories to survive, now they're making us fat and diabetic

2) High Blood Pressure: salt craving and dehydration.  We are able to store and retrieve water for a very long time compared to other mammals, but the tradeoff is liver damage and high blood pressure.

3) Anxiety/Depression: fear/aversion mechanisms.  They used to keep us alive when a rustling branch could have been a tiger, or a sign of an incoming hailstorm.  Now they force people to relive trauma and to be overly anxious or beaten down.

4) Strokes/Heart Attacks: clotting mechanisms.  Once upon a time, we were surrounded by a world that made us bleed pretty often.  Especially childbirth, which without overactive clotting, would have doomed the species.  Now we're often within hailing distance of a hospital, and the clots themselves are killing us.

The first three quarters of the book, where he dissects these four sets of biological phenomena, is really fascinating, and I wish he would have stopped there, but I imagine the publisher or his editor demanded that he provide a solution (there isn't one) which he attempts in a sort of half-hearted coda about altering genetics or behaviors or both.  I get why it's there (the book is a bit of a downer, to be completely honest - so scientifically interesting, but a downer) but it really throws the book off stride and makes the finish a lot weaker than it could have otherwise been.