The Witches Are Coming

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.

Lindy West follows up her memoir, Shrill, with a collection of essays that speak to this exact moment and are thoughtful, funny, but also angry — and proudly so.   Recommended By Keith M., Powells.com

In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

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.

"A riot of quirkiness and eccentricity, and the mood of the book, which shifts from droll humor to melancholy to gentle vulnerability, is unclassifiable — and just right." Kirkus

"In this time of great frustration, this collection is a clearing in the woods to meet, to reflect, to dance, and to cackle around the fire." Abbi Jacobson, creator of Broad City and New York Times bestselling author of I Might Regret This

"A cornucopia of shrewd cultural observations... [West's] sharp wit and no-nonsense sense of humor also shines through... [West] drives home the critical issues of our time while taking time to tickle our funny bones. Satirical, raw, and unapologetically real, West delivers the bittersweet truths on contemporary living." Kirkus Reviews

"One of our foremost thinkers on gender unveils her unifying theory of America: that our steady diet of pop culture created by and for embittered, entitled white men has stoked our sociopolitical moment. Adam Sandler, South Park, and Pepe the Frog all come under West's withering scrutiny in this funny, hyper-literate analysis of the link between meme culture and male mediocrity." Esquire.com

"Equal parts hilarious and sobering, West's words will help fellow witches articulate why they are so fired up (YES!)." Booklist

LINDY WEST is an opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the bestselling memoir Shrill, and executive producer of the acclaimed Hulu adaptation starring Aidy Bryant. She lives in Seattle.