KRISTEN ARNETT
author of Mostly Dead Things
“Elissa Washuta is exactly the writer we need right now: as funny as she is formidable a thinker, as thoughtful as she is inventive—her scrutiny is a fearless tool, every subject whittled to its truest form. White Magic is a bracingly original work that enthralled me in a hypnosis on the other side of which I was changed for the better, more likely to trust my own strange intelligence.”
MELISSA FEBOS
author of Girlhood
“In brilliant, clear-eyed prose, Elissa Washuta maps a magical passage into (and back out of) the underworld, through knotty legacies of violence and longing and love. Part history, part riddle, part portal: this book worked on me like a spell. I've never read anything like White Magic, and will be returning to it again and again.”
CLAIRE COMSTOCK-GAY
author of Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars
“You're going to feel like you're drownfloating reading this diary of pain and meditation and wish for magic where every word helps Elissa Washuta's soul return to her body. White Magic is as haunting as the work of Becky Lane’s Where the Rivers Join and as eerily hypnotic as Kate Schatz’s Rid of Me. These pages are windows into a black lodge where Twin Peaks and Fleetwood Mac are on repeat—sometimes forward, sometimes backwards, sometimes in blackout blur. I stand in awe of everything here. What an incredible and wounding read.”
RICHARD VAN CAMP
author of The Lesser Blessed
AUTHOR PHOTO: © KR FORBES
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.
Copyright © 2021 Elissa Washuta
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.
Published by Tin House, Portland, Oregon
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Washuta, Elissa, author.
Title: White magic : essays / Elissa Washuta.
Description: Portland, Oregon : Tin House, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043847 | ISBN 9781951142391 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781951142407 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Washuta, Elissa.—Psychology. | Witchcraft. | Witches—United States—Psychology. | Indians of North America—Psychology.
Classification: LCC BF1598.W37 A3 2021 | DDC 133.4/30973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043847
First US Edition 2021
Interior design by Jakob Vala
www.tinhouse.com
“My Heartbreak Workbook” contains Twemoji graphics made by Twitter and other contributors, licensed under CC-BY 4.0. https://github.com/twitter/twemoji. It also contains derivatives of Twemoji graphics and an original graphic by Jakob Vala.
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