The Bookies is the Goodwin Library’s book club! Join us in October to discuss Witchcraft by Marion Gibson.
We always have multiple copies of the book available for checkout—stop by to pick one up! New members are always welcome.
This program can be attended in-person or online. Please email Amy at acornwell@goodwinlibrary.org if you would like the Zoom link.
Summary: This “inventive and compelling” (The Times Literary Supplement, London) work of social history travels through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders.
Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized, and then reimagined as gendered persecution, Witchcraft takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance.
