Ariel Gore

This experimental novel uses magick spells and inverted fairly tales to combat queer scapegoating, domestic violence, and high-interest student loans.

We Were Witches

Stas

If we invert Freytag's pyramid, what belongs at the center of a book?

Perhaps not a culminating climax so much as potential space.

Delivery men in blue shorts brought my grandparents' television.

Brought Anita Hill testifying against Clarence Thomas.

Brought Rodney Kind the night he was beaten by the LAPD.

At least one hundred thousand people were killed as witches. Some researchers put the number closer to a million. The vast majority of those killed were poor women. Men were murdered, too, and children and middle-class people, but the vast majority were poor women. And it wasn't a case of mass hysteria. The witch trials were a calculated campaign of terror financed and carried out by the ruling class against working-class and difficult women to establish the supremacy of Christian, white patriarchy and Western medicine for profit.

The witch walked me to the door, said, "If you don't like the fairy tales you've been handed, Ariel, you don't have to conform to them. You can reauthor them. You can write your story however you choose." 

Poor white people and poor people of color had so much in common - it was the wealthy dividing us with racism to keep us poor.

Under the fluorescent lights, women studied their pre-law books. They threatened to slap their crying children. Women checked their watches, their beepers. They chewed blue bubblegum. They filled out paperwork. 

is it just me or does that read as a self help book

If there are only two options, always choose material poverty over psychic poverty. 

If there are only two options, create a third option as soon as possible.

you are never gonna guess what this is about (pyramids)

I glanced at the other women in the workshop.

Was the illustration on the blackboard not obviously a penis?

I'd been allowed into the graduate workshop as an undergrad. Maybe best not to ask too many questions.

The instructor dragges the white chalk up one side of the penis. "You being with the rising action," she explained. She drew a quick circle around the head of the penis. "It culminates in 

The other women int he class nodded like they'd heard it all before, like they totally didn't see the penis.

Mariann

"Oh." I raised my hand quickly. "Of course. I mean. The regular amount. Of violence."

Give me goals to seek and the determination to achieve them.

Allow me to live surrounded by plants, animals, and children.

Allow me the strength and wisdom to be my own mistress.

And empower my ongoing sexual liberation. 

I wanted to be the kind of writer who illuminated hidden injustice so starkly that it would simply cease to be perpetrated. 'If only people knew that the government was retaking Native land! Everyone would be outraged!' It hadn't yet occurred to me that most people might feel fine about consciously exploiting other people.

If you suspect a neighbor of giving you the evil eye, place a small mirror on the windowsill facing their home and whisper, "Return to sender."

We Were Witches

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