Form Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review via Net Galley. They give me no money, nor do they in any way influence my thoughts. Those are 100% my own for better or worse.
Non-Form Disclaimer: I am still struggling to find the format I like most for this blog and my reviews, so sorry everything keeps changing. I’ll settle on something someday, promise.
Here is the feminist-ass publisher’s description: THIS IS A WITCH HUNT.WE’RE WITCHES,AND WE’RE HUNTING YOU.From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.
In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.
West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form-like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’-white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.”
We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America-without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact-checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.
My Thoughts: I love Lindy West. I’m just going to throw that out there. She is intelligent, funny, thoughtful, and no-holds barred in a way that I had always (in the early 90s) secretly hoped Roseanne Barr would be – but she’s not, as we all learned and then re-learned ad nauseum (thanks, Roseanne for your groundbreaking television show, but I really wish you’d reconsider your batshit political leanings, at least). But I digress (shocker, I know). *ahem*
Starting over. I love Lindy West. I loved Shrill, I’ve loved her published essays/articles, and this book is no exception. I love it too. I love a good, positive women/witches comparison. This book has it all. It’s pithy, brutal, frank, and hopeful at turns. Is Lindy angry? Undoubtedly. But you know what? So am I. And so too, should you be. The world is falling apart around us. Women are losing their rights and their autonomy left and right. So are trans folks. And POC. Who’s next? And why do we keep letting it happen? West covers feminism, abortion, climate change, misogyny, Goop, whether or not Adam Sandler is really funny, Joan Rivers, Ricky Gervais, Adam Carolla, Harvey Weinstein, the aforementioned Roseanne Barr, Gamergate, Pizzagate, toxic masculinity, gendered violence, and pretty much every other interesting (and incendiary) topic a modern human might care to explore.
My determination: 5 out of 5 arbitrary items of rating. Buy this book. And Shrill. Bask in the warm, fiery glow of Lindy gleefully lambasting the worst of the worst, and utterly refusing to apologize for it. As she should.
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The Witches Are Coming Non-Fiction Hachette Books Release Date: November 5, 2019 ISBN 9780316449885
