White Magic: Essays

by Elissa Washuta

Bracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists.

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits” of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became 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.

White witchery, an introduction --
Act I. Ace of cups. The devil. Death. Little lies --
The spirit corridor --
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death --
Act II. Four of cups. Ten of swords. The tower. White city --
Oregon Trail II for Windows 95/98/ME & Macintosh: challenge the unpredictable frontier --
Centerless universe --
Act III. The magician. The empress. The world. My heartbreak workbook --
The spirit cabinet --
In him we have redemption through his blood

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Indigenous, Mental Health, Feminism, Audiobook

432 pages, Hardcover

First published April 27, 2021

About the author

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.

Reviews

[Jenna Gareis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Five (or 10) things about White Magic by Elissa Washuta 2/5⭐️

1. I read this as recommended by a local librarian in response to my love of The Witch of Eye by Kathryn Nuernberger.
2. I didn’t like this and that was confusing. On paper, this book is my perfect match. I spent my whole time reading it trying to make myself love it or at least hone in on the aspects I respected from it but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
3. After much contemplation I’ve come to this insight about myself - I do not enjoy reading personal essays where the writer is using the essay to attempt to work through a personal struggle. I prefer personal essays that detail the struggle and the greater understanding, growth, letting go, acceptance…what have you…that comes through the personal struggle. I don’t want to read about being in the storm. I want to read about the storm from the other side.
4. There’s an adolescence phase of personal essayist and there’s a Sage phase. These phases have nothing at all to do with physical age. I am not at all interested in reading from the adolescent personal essayist. Washuta is no sage.
5. She’s just trying too hard to write with wisdom she has not yet tapped into. She’s trying too hard to sound both timeless and ultra relevant. She’s writing about her personal experience which is unique to only her and yet it feels like she’s written an anthem to “buzz” - how many topics that have been successful for other personal essayists can she pack into her own?
6. She relies exclusively on rage and sarcasm as her only emotional vehicles. This was not only uncomfortable but eventually quite dull.
7. So - Neurnberger writes about witches, witchcraft, religion, pop culture, history, rape, society. So does Washuta. I get why this was suggested as an if/then read. But one is written by a sage with lyrical profundity and vast depths of wisdom , secure in her self, striving for a level of universal relatability. The other is written by an angry adolescent essayist looking for approval, a place to lay a lot of blame, and too much navel gazing. One was a life changing, chastising, inspirational, revelatory read and one was a series of unmemorable temper tantrums lacking clear direction.
8. If you’re looking for strong emotion or responsible blame laying I’ll recommend Killing Rage by Bell Hooks. Now there’s some sage rage! Washuta certainly and undeniably has a lot of real pain and anguish to work through - personally, culturally, and generationally. I am NOT critiquing her life. And it takes guts and bravery to write with the kind of candor she attempts. I’m only critiquing how she’s attempted to share all that with the world. I think this attempt was premature and lacked clarity, depth, direction, and purpose.
9. Before I’d read this, I did not know nor care about Carl or Washuta’s unhealthy relationship with/to Carl. Having read this- I still do not care. Washuta did not successfully communicate her care. That’s problematic for a essay collection that centers Carl who is also off-centered and masqueraded as little more than a symptom of all the other distractions Washuta throws at you.
10. Overall - this lacks order and thus meaning for anyone but Washuta. That would be absolutely alright if this were a private journal. It’s not.

[Rennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my GOD what did I just read? I actually had to stop reading this and put it aside for a few days because it was so good I didn’t want it to be over too quickly.

[Ross Blocher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, what a wild ride this book was! It's not what I was expecting, and my opinion of it changed (and improved) over time. I picked up White Magic expecting an itemized appraisal of white cultural appropriation of indigenous practices within the world of magic and spiritualism, which the description and opening pages led me to expect (and I'd still really enjoy, if anyone has such a book to recommend). What I got instead was this series of essays by Elissa Washuta, who pours out her soul, her relationships, her insecurities, her fixations, and her past for all of us to see.

At first, I just felt terrible for her: in the opening essay she describes a past full of repeat physical assault, abuse, stalking, abandonment, betrayal... and a present full of PTSD and bipolar swings. She tries to assert control over her universe with an assortment of medications, psychic consultations, astrology, Googled spells, protection auras, prayer, and a host of other things that aren't likely to do much good, all while destroying her body with alcohol in an effort to numb the pain.

I'm glad I didn't give up. Given time to establish its pace, multiple themes and an unconventional structure emerges, and the writing sharpens. Washuta's commitment to various forms of pseudoscience take on a tinge of humor, with even the occasional modicum of perspective. I'm reminded of when she goes from a reiki (energy healing) session to a predatory psychic who tries to sell her on $1,000 worth of "work". She can't afford that, but gets guilted into buying a candle, and then proceeds directly to a therapist who tells her the candle is evil, and to get rid of it. The therapist happens to be an astrologist.

If there's a central structure to this book, it's Washuta's relationship with ex-boyfriend Carl, who she repeatedly falls in and out of love with (mostly in), with lots of pining over his lack of reciprocated interest. In one essay, we are stuck in an endless loop of text conversations and Instagram posts as we jump back and forth between 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. There are other ex-boyfriends, including Henry (abusive and detached) and Billy (detached, boring, and just... mean). However, Washuta shines when she begins to draw metaphorical connections between her situation and her various obsessions. She spots her own doppelgänger from the future on the bus. She has an encyclopedic memory of Twin Peaks. She replays scenes from The Adventures of Mark Twain in claymation. She endlessly scrutinizes the interactions of Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham in recorded concerts. She wins a writing commission to write about a bridge, and spends weeks working in the tower alongside neon Rapunzel. She plays Pokémon Go. She plays Oregon Trail. She flips through Tinder, and Instagram, and Wikipedia, and Google... even Ask Jeeves is invoked. She reflects upon her Cowlitz ancestry (indigenous people from what is now southwestern Washington) and fragmentary information about her ancestors and the way they lived. She moves to Ohio and buys a house. She's attuned to numerology, and thrills at the occasional Carls and Karls the universe drops in her lap.

All of this provides fertile material for Washuta to make connections, take wry jabs at herself, share her process of learning and growing... and it's all pretty engrossing. She's a gifted writer and a reflective (if not always critical) thinker, and it's fun to watch her work with the material life has given her.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote about this book in my newsletter: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/p/...

I don't think I've ever read an essay collection with this kind of momentum, structural ingenuity, internal force. It's definitely an essay collection. Each piece is brilliant, whole, a gorgeously woven piece of art and work and thought. But it's also a whole book that adds up to something beyond each each of the individual pieces. I honestly have no idea how Washuta is able to do both of these things at once, but it makes for an incredibly captivating reading experience. I found myself holding my breath, desperate to know what was going to happen next. That is not a feeling I typically have while reading essays, though I love reading essays.

The other thing this book does so brilliantly is inhabit many kinds of writer-worlds. What I mean is, this is an emotional read. Washuta's prose is intimate, evocative, lush. These essays are full of scenes. It is deeply grounded in the physical and emotional world, the body. But, at the same time, Washuta is playing with structure, with narrative. She engages with other work, other writers and thinkers. It is not an easy read, not only because of the subject matter (sexual assault, rape, emotional and physical abuse, trauma) but because it is so densely packed with complicated, layered thinking. At times, it is academic. At times, it is absolutely not. This blending, this ability to weave a book out of many seemingly-desperate strands, is something I love and am constantly on the lookout for in nonfiction. This book does it so, so well.

It's about so so so many things—the New Jersey landscape of Washuta's childhood, witchery, Indigenous histories and landscapes, the legacies of colonialism and colonial violence, ancestry, trauma and PTSD, being alone with yourself, writing, addiction, healing. Trying to sum any of it up feels impossible, like trying to unweave an intricate tapestry.

There is an essay in this book about Washuta playing the classic Oregon Trail computer game as an adult that is definitely one of the best essays I have ever read. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. But even as I write this, I see that I feel that way about this whole book. It is haunting and powerful, often painful but also scattered with moments of relentless humor, full of reckoning.

[Demelza · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was about a woman finding her power through witchcraft, but it ended up being about some dude named Carl. Skip this, unless you really enjoy reading about lame dudes.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa.

[lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few months ago I read Elissa Washuta's book My Body is a Book of Rules, which I loved. I was fortunate enough to hear about her upcoming book, and the title caught my eye. I grew up alongside a bunch of New Age-y hippies, and the idea of an Indigenous woman writing a book called White Magic was intriguing to me. It's supposed to be a story of how Washuta used the inner strength found during her years of trauma to become a "powerful witch".

I have a hard time reflecting on this book, partly because the focus of westernized magical practices are so broadly spoken of, although they play a very minor role. The idea of Indigenous power is understandably not really talked about, but is alluded to in such a vague way that it feels like it shouldn't have been included at all. As a Native woman, I understand how difficult it is to discuss this sort of thing in a way that is respectful and that doesn't discuss things that aren't meant to be discussed. However, it seemed to give an undue amount of power to westernized magical tools like Tarot and astrology, and not enough power to Native ceremonies and other tools that probably helped Washuta find her power. But perhaps Tarot and astrology was more helpful to Washuta. Western culture is certainly more accessible to people than Native culture.

In addition, this book is primarily about the events of the author's past decade which include a lot of things that were very hard to read about including sexual assault, many abusive relationships, alcohol abuse, and racism. I suspect if I hadn't just read My Body is a Book of Rules a few months ago I would have been better equipped to read this, but I feel like I'm still processing the events of Washuta's earlier traumas, which include sexual assault, abusive relationships, alcohol abuse, and racism. I appreciate the fact that Washuta gives voice a Native woman's long history of surviving abuse and diminishing our stories, but as a Native woman I am also processing decades (and generations) of abuses and racism, and reading a 400 page book that really gets into the horror of trauma is a bit much. By the end I was skimming everything, and realizing that yes, this is another page about how her ex is terrible to her, so let me skip it, and yes, this is another page about how her ex makes her feel like shit, so let me skip it, because she has established that her ex is awful, and I sympathize, but I am still coming to terms with how awful my ex was and we broke up 15 years ago. Her traumas hit a little close to home, I guess.

I would have been interested to read about the commodification and cultural appropriation of certain Native practices in the magical community, which Washuta barely mentions. This may be a good thing, and I can understand if it doesn't speak to her experiences at all, but since I grew up in close proximity to a yogic commune I feel like a lot these so called tools of magic were often weaponized against me, and I'm still resentful that I was used to legitimize certain practices like sweat lodges, and sage smoke (often used in conjunction with Tarot, candles and crystals) because I was a "real" Native American. Washuta brushes against this during her chapter on writing about the bridge while living in Seattle, but doesn't discuss much of what Native people have been asked to authenticate in the name of magic. After this book is published that may become to subject of her next book.

I think Native authors should be published, and should be read, and should be supported, even if their books fall a little short for me. This was well written, and I will continue to read Elissa Washuta in the future.

[Sarah’s Prismatic Musings · Rating 1 out of 5]

D.N. F. Do you want to be depressed? Read this book. Do you want to hear about abuse and PTSD? Read this book. Do you want to read about a woman who almost kills herself with alcohol? Read this book. To me magic is about empowerment. This was not about empowerment, but desperation.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm all for people, especially women, making money however they can in a capitalist society. That said, I'd love for the National Endowment for the Arts to pay for my journals from my 30s.

I fully expect this review to end up in her next collection.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been really interesting to see the outside-the-box ways writers have taken on the memoir/essay (memoir-essay? essay/memoir?) genre. The way stories don't have to be linear, the way essays can vary in length and style, the way a collection can cover a small time period of the writer's life, instead of being so comprehensive. Elissa Washuta has done just that with White Magic, a collection of essays anchored by a romantic breakup but that branches out into her addiction, health (mis)diagnoses, the occult, and her relationship to pop culture, often pop culture that whitewashes Native traditions.

I love that Washuta and Tin House gave this book the space to be long (400+ pages) and winding and messy. Because there are so many subjects at play, you don't get a deep dive on any of them, which I found refreshing. An essay on Washuta's experience playing The Oregon Trail 2 in relation to her own Native ancestry was powerful, but it struck me that she was just relaying her experience rather than offering some larger socio-political commentary on the problematic nature of the game. Many events, like her relationships with men, read as though she's writing them in order to process them, not to reveal some grander message. It makes sense, as the events of the book take place in the very recent past, and it gives the whole project an immediate feel, like you as a reader aren't here to necessarily learn anything, but to take in these collisions of topics in an artful way and think on them and perhaps continue thinking without ever reaching any conclusion.

As mentioned, the anchor or event that jump-started the writing of the book was Washuta trying to get over a breakup, but structurally, there's no solid arc that pinpoints an epiphany or point of moving past any conflicts. Washuta even brings this up, and I so appreciated that inclusion, as I think Western publishing is still somewhat tied to traditional linear storytelling that includes a set climax amongst rising and falling action. Washuta plays with time a lot, especially in an essay involving Twin Peaks, a show that also fucks with time. She notices a synchronicity of events in her relationship happening almost on the same day each year and structures the piece that way so you're constantly going back and forth in time and revisiting the Log Lady along the way. This book will have you questioning why so many stories are told in a linear fashion and perhaps how we're being harmed or held back from healing by trying to fit our life's stories into that sort of mold.

The pop culture elements seem more prominent than any extensive discussion on Native life, which I think surprises some people, but to me it's an example of a writer not feeling the need to write sooooo much to their identity. Maybe Washuta is as deeply affected by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's fraught relationship as she is by the cheapening and appropriation of Native spiritual tools and customs. Writers from the margins have sooooo much to say beyond the trauma of their oppression, and this book really feels like a collection of what was moving and driving the writer most at the time. Again, authenticity can be hard to come by in publishing, but White Magic really feels like a collection told in the shape and voice the author envisioned.

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for everybody, but it was 100% for me. If you know what it's like to feel like you've been wandering and lost through an underworld for decades, trying to read the signs and to find the right door to get out, then this is most definitely for you.

Living inside narratives means becoming an insight machine, and I am tired of realizing—that word is a lie. Conjuring up epiphanies doesn’t make anything real. Mostly, realizing is how I lie.

There is no right door, though, and I think that's so important in this! A lot of memoirs give you the catharsis of a door at the end, but this, like Twin Peaks: The Return, which it lovingly references (damn, I love that show!), does not owe you closure. It's about struggling, it's about dealing with pain, it's about trying to find meaning, but being trapped by the narratives you create around things. It's about being way too into the narrative of you and this dude named Carl (I know what it's like to have a Carl, funnily enough we met our 'Carls' about two weeks apart, isn't that magical?), it's about building the structure of a spiral, a coil which you tighten (like Carl who is a bit of a snake - a Carl being at a reading where a story being read calls another Carl a snake - MAGIC). It's about being a total Taurus North Node person (you don't have to believe in astrology, I'm just pointing out the magic of seeing someone write a thing you've thought about, plausible or not, and my Taurus North Node and Scorpio South Node is something I've thought about!). It's about wanting magic and wanting to make magic. Funny how this book and a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... to the End of the World recently reminded me of what it's like to be a powerless young girl, trapped in an underworld, wanting to have magical power.

This review feels like a vulnerable, raw thing, to show myself in a certain light, where I could be judged. But I found this book to be so relatable and also raw and vulnerable. It's like, the magic of feeling deeply connected to someone through their writing, like the writing is a portal.

Hard to fully express how much this touched me! Guess I'll just have to read it again and again!

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:
Because I am alone and low on hope sometimes.
...
I need to get better and I’m out of ideas. I arrange the candles, and I pray. (c)
Q:
When I choose, anoint, and burn a candle with my prayers scratched into the wax, when I make my prayers material, I convince myself I can grab on to a power that will carry me through this life. I know how to show the spirits I’m here through the light of my fire, because we have always used fire to smoke fish, conduct ceremony, burn cedar boughs, turn prairie brush to ash so the camas or huckleberries can grow stronger. (c)

[Ceallaigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A canal wants to be a river. It wants to carry what a river carries, but without flair: tidy banks, no tricky bends. A river doesn’t want to be a canal, but now that the settlers are here, a river doesn’t have a choice.”

TITLE—White Magic
AUTHOR—Elissa Washuta
PUBLISHED—2021

GENRE—memoir; essays
SETTING—modernday America
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—witchcraft, cultural appropriation, Indigenous identity, PTSD, mental health, love, astrology, tarot, absurdism

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
BONUS ELEMENT/S—“You destroyed my heart,” I say. “And then I became a powerful witch.”
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“I walk back thinking about dead sharks in the water, caught by somebody who wanted something else.”

Alright. I honestly didn’t mean to rush through this. I wanted to stop after every few chapters and really digest what I’d read but I literally could not stop reading it. I think what was primarily driving me through this book was my curiosity for a story that was so unique and totally unlike anything I’d ever encountered before. It was a total intellectual and emotional experience. I had to consciously digest every sentence and consider every possible meaning and implication behind the author’s choices from structure, to metaphor, to the details she picks as relevant, the questions she asks both herself and her reader—she covers so many different topics and emotions and yet still manages to keep everything contained and purposeful.

“The doctor prescribes a pill and asks me if I’m getting any exercise. I tell her I’ve been cutting my lawn out of the ground with a knife.”

Indigenous identity & generational trauma: “The site of my wounding can’t be reached because it disappeared under the dammed river’s water clot long before I was born into the nightmare.”

I think what also particularly blew me away about this book was how unreservedly raw and personal it was. I was constantly being floored by the fact that someone could write something so revealing about their inner personal journey and write it so honestly and make themselves so so vulnerable in print! Idk. Maybe that’s a total projection of my own fear of revealing too much of myself to anyone let alone any total stranger that might read a book revealing some of my most private and personal thoughts and experiences but damn. Washuta does not hold back and going through all of her “research” (LOVED that wordchoice btw) with her was such an incredible, rewarding, emotional, and eyeopening (both as to the perspective of someone else and to my perception of my own life) experience. I’ll definitely be rereading this one!

“Maybe it’s not that I’m so strange; it’s just that I catalog pieces of strangeness and, through them, bring my body into focus in a way I can’t when I look into the mirror.”

“…sometimes, it’s not the real but the imagined that unlocks answers that save us.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

TW // rape, sexual assault, sexual trauma, PTSD, sexualization of Indigenous women, mental health, colonialism, genocide, alcoholism, toxic relationships, emotional abuse

Further Reading—
- I, Tituba, by Maryse Condé
- Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
- Walking the Witch, by Pam Grossman
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk


Favorite Quotes…

“But I don’t like calling myself a witch. I don’t want to be seen as following a fad, and I don’t want the white witches I resemble to take my presence in their spaces as permission for theft. Really, I just want a version of the occult that isn’t built on plunder.”

“The truth is I’m not a witch, exactly: I’m a person with prayers, a person who believes in spirits and plays with fire.”

“The PTSD diagnosis scared me. My triggers and traumas had been allowed to multiply unchecked, making for a hefty pile of kindling that would catch fire from the smallest sparks… My challenge would be to learn through therapy to function in a world full of reminders that I would probably be harmed again.”

“I speak every fear into the bucket: That I am not safe. That I am too wounded to be anything but a burden. That the best of me has been taken, the rest of me left to grope for a calm that might never be anything but potential space for danger.”

“It sounds like the little lies that come to me and ask to be called epiphanies.”

“The answer was that I needed to ask for help. I am loath to, ever, because it’s only when I’ve needed something from somebody that I’ve been let down.”

“I’m not comfortable with the notion that I have all the information I need, because I’ve never known that to be true.”

“…I was instructed in assumption before gravity, resurrection before biological death, and immaculate conception before reproduction. The problem with mystery is that I have always understood completely. I never fully cultivated a sense of reason in which what’s called supernatural would be anything but natural.”

“It takes safety to dream: to play house in my mind, to build us a little life in the future, to believe we are living in magic and can use it to make us happy.”

“In the woods, I turned over rocks, looking for the underworld, always fearing I’d find a nest of snakes instead.”

“I wanted a love that would rouse the dead. Maybe the devil, then, was the beloved I’d been looking for.”

“A spell is a set of words meant to make magic by calling upon a deity, spirit, demon, or other supernatural power. The spell is the request; the magic is the miracle. A spell, then, must be the same as a prayer.”

“When you don’t understand the meaning of something you read, whose fault is it? Yours or the writer’s? It has to be someone’s fault. Everything does. Anyway, I just ask because this is my book. Do you think I understand everything in this book? If I don’t, can you?”

“How am I supposed to live, not knowing where the ghosts are, where my murder will happen, where my corpse will be left? I could be murdered anywhere, really, because that’s where the men live, but that truth was easy to ignore when I was blithe and rosy in that made-up land where I might have been dreaming, might have been playing pretend, might have been nothing more than a man’s imagining.”

“This book is a narrative. It has an arc. But the tension is not in what happened when I lived it; it’s in what happened when I wrote it. Like I already told you, this is not just a recounted story; I am trying to make something happen and record the process and results.”

“…the way the trauma can turn thoughts into sinister nonsense that moves violence from unthinkable response to natural answer.”

“The choice is not to be a witch or to be a witch, not to believe in magic or to believe in reality, but to be an open door or a closed one.”

“You’ve traveled so many miles but you still haven’t seen the sun or the moon.”

“Do you think this is a good book? How do you know? Is it because you compared it to other books? I do want to make you uncomfortable if you’re accustomed to being the ideal audience, your wants prioritized. This is how I treat so many of the people I get close to: I try to give them exactly what they want in some ways, withhold in others. Can you love a person even if you don’t understand them? Or: How much do you have to understand someone in order to love them? Does one have anything to do with the other at all?”

“Nature wasn’t good enough for settlers; it demanded transformation.”

“But Duwamish villages lined the Black River. A long-haired man-shaped monster, skaitaw, once lived in a deep river hole. A person could draw power and wealth from skaitaw. I don’t know what happened to the being. I imagine a dry hole filled with the memory of a monster, a cold spot of warped energy, the residue of power sucked from the world.”

“I became so busy insisting on the fact of my existence that it was only through strain that I could summon up the words for anything else.”

“At first, the change in diagnosis brought on a mild identity crisis—bipolar disorder had been a major part of my routine and my self-conception for most of my adult life… PTSD was the external turned internal, a constant string of triggerings, a body and mind set against the world.”

“I have lost my land, my language, a thousand choices that should have been mine to make.”

“I have a highlighter, a composition book, and a pen. I have time. I do not have any better ideas.”

“…our reality is a fabrication of our own making, formed from our thoughts and actions.”

“The site of my wounding can’t be reached because it disappeared under the dammed river’s water clot long before I was born into the nightmare.”

“Men of my history, hear me: When you talk down to me, fuck around on me, disappear from me, lie to me, that’s an interesting perspective but actually me, you disrespect a woman made of women knotted in a long string stretching back before massacre.”

“Because I am a fool, I have faith he’ll use what I’ve told him to love me better.”

“Borders are the flesh wounds of empire. On the map they look like stitches on a belly.”

“They’d make you think that evil and need have the same means and ends.”

[nia · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a very good book, but it's also very complicated. DEFINITELY triggering and not labelled correctly. i also think it's harder to critique it BECAUSE it's so raw and real. but it's got its flaws. the beginning is pretty good and the middle is excellent, but by the end i was racing through, exhausted and desperate to finish. i wish she had unpacked her beliefs and the theory she deploys a little more... i wasn't satisfied with it and i felt like there was more to dig into. i am so happy to hear a Native voice, and i love her prose! it just sort of falls apart for me at the end

[L · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish. My library loan expired halfway through and I may not bother to place another hold. On paper I should love this book and I genuinely liked parts, mostly when she used history and culture to tell stores about more than herself. But that didn't overrule my boredom and annoyance at many other things, especially Carl.

[Care · Rating 3 out of 5]

White Magic is a combination of a memoir and a collection of essays about pop culture, cultural appropriation, and history. I'm not sure the blend between the personal and the critical was seamless though there were elements of both that I really enjoyed.

The discussion around non-Indigenous magic practitioners/witches appropriating Indigenous herbs and ceremonies (i.e., the title essay) was what I thought I was getting when I picked this up and while I wish there had been more in depth on the topic, I also got some enjoyable chapters that I hadn't expected. Some touch on video games that I love while others play with format and tongue-in-cheek writing styles. Others cover tv shows I haven't seen or music I'm not interested in, so it was a mixed bag.

Definitely take a look at the table of contents and see if there are some essays in here that you'd like to sample!


content warnings for: discussion of rape, racism, cultural appropriation, mental illness, psychological abuse, toxic relationships.

[gpears · Rating 2 out of 5]

a DNF..starts off strong with vulnerable, witty writing reflecting on Washuta’s experience with witchcraft, addiction, and PTSD…but it ended up mostly being about her relationship with this dude Carl..so it read more like a journal than an essay collection which made it hard to follow..the narratives centered men in a way that made it hard for me to understand and empathize with..I was like who is this loser Carl anyways 😭

I did like the writing style tho..Washuta has unique voice that shines through..maybe i’ll revisit sometime and finish the rest of the essays 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Leonore · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not great. Full of excuses for self absorbed very destructive behavior. Lucky to be alive for sure, but has she learned to love herself? It reads like a guide of how not to live your life. The relationships are horrible. This really doesn't talk about native culture and doesn't match the title of the book. "Desperation" would be a better title.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved Elissa Washuta's stunning essay collection White Magic. It's sold as a Native woman reflecting on the appropriation of Indigenous magical traditions by 'Instagram witches' but is really about intergenerational trauma, time and relationship with the land. Washuta brilliantly repeats and returns to different moments, physically encountering her past and future selves but also finding resonance in objects as well as in popular culture, from Twin Peaks to Oregon Trail to anti-drug public information adverts from the 90s. If you loved Carmen Maria Machado's In The Dream House, read this. 4.5 stars.

[Ashley Daviau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and haunting read and really quite different from what I was expecting. I quite enjoyed it though!

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Spoiler Alert: at the end we are changed. We feel foolish or sad. Any narrative is a magic trick: the unfolding happens where you're not looking. I wanted this narrative—this one, this story, this riddle, this experiment, this trick, this device—to teach me to love right, but all I know is that I'm not sure I can love a man who wouldn't let me die. And maybe that means I can't love a man if I want to live."

Watusha admits, "If there is nothing greater than sad flesh and what it touches, I need a magician to build an illusion to distract me from anguish." In representing the three-card basic pull for Tarot, the collection has three acts with three essays or scenes each. The acts are associated with three major arcana cards each, a total of nine. It mixes cultural commentary with self-examination, memoir with historical exploration. It deals with heavy themes, can get despairing, but Washuta has a talent for narrative and self-reflexively, she speaks about the demands of the three-act structure in a meta manner. Her writing is affecting, her language teams with lushness, and the essays themselves are hard-hitting.

There was less astrology and arcana than I bargained for which, while I find fascinating, I maintain to be hokum and usually a means to scam people. It's also a lot more about some dude named Carl—with whom she has an unhealthy relationship over a couple years—than the witchcraft and I personally really could not care less about softboy Carl. Its blurb doesn't indicate his omnipresence. I also cannot help but point out that essays do tend to bleed into each other and can get same-y, although Washuta does spin them up. I must say, missed opportunity for a deeper examination of co-option, cultural appropriation, authenticity with respect to Native American rituals, traditions, spirituality, magic.

The most impressive essay, "The Spirit Cabinet", is also the longest one. One can see this as loose narrative culmination, encapsulating the collection's arc. Washuta plays with time and echoed imagery, taking cue from David Lynch and Twin Peaks—the memoir fragments are interspersed with quotes from philosophers and magicians as well as the show itself. "Centerless Universe" is my favourite and it revolves around her brief role as Fremont Bridge's writer-in-residence but of course it's about much more, incredibly rich like others. I also appreciated the two video game essays, Oregon Trail II and Red Dead Redemption 2, both as a way in to discuss the West, American colonization, and Native American history.



(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow! This book! I really don't know what to make of it. At first I was devouring it, like "damn this is brilliant. Elissa is too smart for me. I can barely keep up." And by the end, I was like "Is this smart or is it just rambling?" She lost me a bit by the "Spirit Cabinet" essay in the final section of the book.

There seems to be a mismatch between the marketing of the book ("how I became a powerful witch") and the reality of it (Twin Peaks references, an obsession with a dude named Carl, interesting information about a residency in a bridge, her ancestral lands, Washington State, NJ, ghost stories, Stevie Nicks, etc). It did have momentum and felt like it was building toward something, but what we arrived at was inconclusive. I didn't walk away feeling like Elissa had learned from her heartbreak and become a powerful witch. It seemed like she was just hiding and playing video games and still alive.

There are lots of amazing elements of this book, but it just never fully cohered for me.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

It feels mean to give this book 1 star when it's obviously very personal and close to the author but I just did not enjoy reading this at all. It's very much written as a form of therapy for the author and it's evident there's still a lot they're working through in it which is fine but I was expecting less of a memoir and more of a nonfiction book. This is mostly about the author's past toxic and abusive relationships which is just not what I was anticipating.

[Ginny Garber · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I hate leaving a book unfinished, this one made me so simultaneously frustrated and bored that I made an exception. Much of the wisdom and witchcraft she seeks is sourced from “the internet,” with a sarcasm at once arrogant and self-conscious, and yet this seems to be also what she is trying to critique. The author toggles between personal essay and historical narrative, seemingly in an attempt to blur the chronological and geographical lines between herself and her ancestors, a technique I very much enjoy in theory; but her execution left me skimming whole pages as she whips between extensive descriptions of regional lakes and streams and her taste in men, violent characters who, she mentions repeatedly, she expects will eventually kill her.
It could be that the second half of this book redeems the first, but I don’t much care to stick around for it.

[Adrienne Blaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Do you think this is a good book? How do you know? Is it because you compared it to other books? I do want to make you uncomfortable if you’re accustomed to being the ideal audience, your wants prioritized.“

Read this book if you can sit with discomfort. This is shadow work.

[E.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t stop thinking about these essays!!!!

[Rachael K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection! It won’t be for everyone and essay collections can be hit or miss for me but it really kept my attention. I liked that it took place in multiple places she’s lived, Ohio, North Jersey and the Pacific Northwest. I loved learning more about the Seattle area and her family’s indigenous history, especially having visited there over the summer. A lot of the collection is depressing, especially what she writes about her relationships but I really appreciated how honest she was about her trauma.

[Olivia Law]

oh god this was so good i couldn’t put it down. really moving, funny, smart writing.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A writing mentor recommended this to me because the author has brilliant language for embodiment. I so admire her collage of pop culture, the way she fingers topics like worry beads, returning again and again to consider another angle, personal or historical.

Washuta characterizes cultural and spiritual appropriation so well—what it feels like to be on the receiving end of theft and rape and oppression. I kept having the feeling that there is no other way to write about this. This is the way. Even after reading both "Carry" and "Heart Berries" recently, knowing they are brilliant, too. I tend to prefer memoirs that layer culture, politics, geography, economics, and historical context, which both "White Magic" and "Carry" do brilliantly.

Washuta's use of epigraphs in the early chapters is a delight As are the footnotes on the epigraphs poking fun at her use of epigraphs.

I love the double entendre of the title. The appropriation of magic by white women and how some online witches even include racist tropes in their written materials. Also, that “white magic” is the “good kind.” The writing is peppered with marvelous, astonishing language:

“Black as a mood ring on a corpse.” (3)
“If you let whiteness in, it takes you for everything you’ve got.” (4)
“I am subject to the wants of a country conjured up by invaders who raped, maimed, and killed until they could settle their dream like a film over the land that held the treasure they wanted.” (7-8)
“Today, sludgy with dread . . .” (11)
“I google spells to take the PTSD out of me. But is that what I want? To stop my brain from thrashing against the wickedness that America stuffed inside?” (12)

About her ex-boyfriend: “He spoke haltingly, as if he were translating the words of a ghost.” (31) “He kisses me like one of us is going to be executed in the morning. I kiss like I’ve figured out how to suck the venom out of him.” (325)

Or her home for ten years: “Washington State is a squatter polity knifed out from my ancestral homeland.” (32)

Washuta writes that white Europeans believed the Devil lived here in North America, having been banished at home by fervent religious effort. (75) “Europeans believed Native Americans worshipped gods that served Satan.” How bonkers is that? Yet look at the lasting, ongoing damage done by such delusion.

She depicts the apocalypse of genocide from many angles, from her own family history to historical records to video games:

“Settlers once so feared the forest that they’d barely venture beyond their landing spots, but they came to need so much land for villages, fields, and herds that everyone foolish enough to have been living there for thousands of years would have to move or die.” (117)

“The end of the world was long: more than half a century of skin turning into sores, necks snapped by rope, blood pouring from bullet holes, vaginas trespassed by unwashed bodies. Through all that, the people had to find ways to keep living.” (196-6)

The middle chapter is an engaging story of her time on the Fremont Bridge as an artist-in-residence, where she researched the history of Seattle settlers’ appropriation of Native land and terraforming the place into submission.

This book is a triumph of layering personal and historical trauma in Seattle and well beyond. She hints at resolution, even starts Act 3 with meeting "the" guy, then says, there’s more to tell first, before we get to that. Thus begins a long timeline of dates and years and “Twin Peaks” scenes, a catalog of coincidence, scenes of synchronicity, themes and recurrences from 2012, 2016, 2017, 2018, some from further in the past. A casting-call for pattern: planetary phases, “random” encounters, repetitions—with the implication we must repeat past situations, continually acting them out until the lesson is learned and we can move on. But we can’t really move on or “learn” because the traumas are in our very bodies, in our cells. Memory is less a movie and more genetic code.

Even as Washuta questions whether her story will yield a satisfying resolution, she leads us to the inevitable understanding that, like our still-unfolding cultural story, it will elude definitive meaning. The reckonings are only beginning, and, as Washuta says, “the worst part of the story is the end.” (402)

[Phyllis | Mocha Drop · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the surface, White Magic is seemingly a cathartic collection of essays that reflect Elissa Washuta’s highly introspective, extremely personal (and quite revealing) experiences surrounding her battles with alcoholism, abusive relationships ending in heartbreak and pain, and post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). With the help of counselors and therapists, she shares the results of their recommendations, their correct and incorrect conclusions, and subsequently the positive and negative effects it had on her life and mental health. However, at its core, she examines the tumultuous trials and tribulations experienced in her lifelong quest for help, healing, and peace. She is officially a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe but has ancestral ties to various other tribes and shares the evolution of her personal belief system which is rooted in Native American spiritualism and bolstered with blended doctrines, spells, and prayer.

The book’s title lends itself to her years of self-study on the subject and her fascination with witchcraft from childhood to adulthood. She pulls examples from pop culture (music, television, movies, icons, etc), literary anecdotes, and academic citations to craft her fascinating critiques of White Magic, Wiccan principles, and the negative influence of commercialization and Westernized (non-Indigenous) influences on the practice of witchcraft. I loved the inclusion of historical snippets and how she weaved her commentary on colonization’s destructive aftereffects and the systemic disenfranchisement of Native Americans throughout a majority of the essays; not to mention her insightful exploration of generational/hereditary trauma.

This book is rich and heavy - I needed to pause after each essay to digest what was presented. Not being familiar with her previous work, I opened this book with an open mind and no expectations and was not disappointed.