White Magic

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends: “starter witch kits” and tarot cards packaged in plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and drug treatment for a bipolar misdiagnosis, she finds herself seeking real love and meaning in her life, and is drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew. In this collection of intertwined essays, Washuta explores the connections between land, heartbreak, and colonization, life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and the process of becoming a powerful witch. 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. (Short Discount)