We Were Witches

By: Ariel Gore

This inspirational “magic-infused narrative . . . is a moving account of a young writer and mother striving to claim her own agency and find her voice” (Publishers Weekly).

Buying into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself and talks her way into college. But once she’s there, phallocratic narratives permeate every subject.

Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single lesbian mother as she’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming unconventional women into passive citizenship.

But even as the narrator struggles to graduate, a question uncomfortably lingers: If you’re dealing with precarious parenthood, queer identity, and debt, what is the true narrative shape of your experience?