November Nonfiction Selection

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I want to thank everyone for attending our first book club meeting. I hope you all had just as much fun as I did and I look forward to our next meeting in November. We also gained a new member! Yay! Welcome, Kari!

Everyone sent me wonderful recommendations for our selection list(s) and I will continue to add to them as people send me their recommendations. We had a few stand out titles for our next reading and I will discuss at our next meeting if we want to read everyone's top five in order of interest or vote each quarter to take into account newly added selections.

In the meantime, I chose our next reading based on popularity with our top five selections and in November, we will be switching gears and reading the nonfiction title:

 

In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of Witches and Why Women are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet

 

Excerpt from the publisher:

“Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witches continue to hold a unique fascination for many: as fairy tale villains, practitioners of pagan religion, as well as feminist icons. Witches are both the ultimate victim and the stubborn, elusive rebel. But who were the women who were accused and often killed for witchcraft? What types of women have centuries of terror censored, eliminated, and repressed?

Celebrated feminist writer Mona Chollet explores three types of women who were accused of witchcraft and persecuted: the independent woman, since widows and celibates were particularly targeted; the childless woman, since the time of the hunts marked the end of tolerance for those who claimed to control their fertility; and the elderly woman, who has always been an object of at best, pity, and at worst, horror. Examining modern society, Chollet concludes that these women continue to be harassed and oppressed. Rather than being a brief moment in history, the persecution of witches is an example of society’s seemingly eternal misogyny, while women today are direct heirs to those who were hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions.

With fiery prose and arguments that range from the scholarly to the cultural, In Defense of Witches seeks to unite the mythic image of the witch with modern women who seek to live their lives on their own terms.”

 



 

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