The Witch of Eye

Product Description
This amazingly wise and nimble collection investigates the horrors inflicted on so-called “witches” of the past.
The Witch of Eye unearths salves, potions, and spells meant to heal, yet interpreted by inquisitors as evidence of evil. The author describes torture and forced confessions alongside accounts of gentleness of legendary midwives. In one essay about a trial, we learn through folklore that Jesus’s mother was a midwife who cured her own son’s rheumatism. In other essays there are subtle parallels to contemporary discourse around abortion and environmental destruction. Nuernberger weaves in her own experiences, too. There’s an ironic look at her own wedding, an uncomfortable visit to the Prague Museum of Torture, and an afternoon spent tearing out a garden in a mercurial fit. Her researched material is eye-opening, lively, and often funny. An absolutely thrilling collection.
Review
Reading Group Choices 2021 Official Selection Publishers Weekly, "Books for Short Attention Spans 2021" The Rumpus, “What to Read When You Want to Celebrate Women’s History” The Rumpus, “What to Read When 2021 Is Just Around the Corner”\n"Part memoir, part cultural criticism, entirely fascinating."\n―Kirkus Reviews, starred review\n"Drawing connections to contemporary social justice issues, philosophy, and feminism, poet and essayist Nuernberger relates a social history of so-called witches across centuries and the globe. In brief, lyrical retellings, she profiles women including Walpurga Hausmännin, a midwife executed for witchcraft in 16th-century Bavaria, and Maria Gonçalves Cajada, convicted of sorcery in 17th-century colonial Brazil. Their stories become a lens on Nuernberger’s own experiences, whether as simple as a walk in the forest, as disturbing as a visit to the Prague Museum of Torture, or as personal as her wedding."\n―“Books for Short Attention Spans 2021,” Publishers Weekly\n"This book is a social history, threaded through with folklore, mythology, current events, and glimpses into the author's own marriage. It is a poetic and hypnotic trance of a read."\n―Booklist\n"This is quintessential reading not just for the wannabe witches among us, but for its nuanced telling of a cruel and silenced history. A compendium of pungent and poignant biographical narratives of numerous so-called witches,
The Witch of Eye is difficult to put down. Nuernberger deftly weaves memoir with well-researched material to create a fascinating, idiosyncratic intellectual history, plucked from the annals of science, medicine, theology, and feminist and critical theory. . . .you must read
The Witch of Eye slowly and with astonishment, not unlike the way you witness the work of a camera placed next to a bud that slowly and inexplicably blossoms before your eyes."\n―"LANGUAGE IS THE SPELL: KATHRYN NUERNBERGER’S THE WITCH OF EYE," The Rumpus\n"The breadth of [
The Witch of Eye's] exploration is made possible in part due to Nuernberger’s nimble, probing thought, which propels this book as it visits both reality and unreality. Her propensity to question given truths foregrounds the book with wonder as Nuernberger identifies with history’s reported 'witches' for the potential she sees in their alternate, subjective, previously unspoken narratives. Nuernberger’s
The Witch of Eye cultivates a space of wonder, a mystical space in which one may co-author reality alongside myth, science, religion, justice, and witchcraft―a space to ponder the well-kept secrets of humanity."\n―Southeast Review, online\n"Kathryn Nuernberger's essay collection
The Witch of Eye delves into lives both past and present with amazing clarity to share their truths."\n―Largehearted Boy, online\n"Meticulously researched."\n―Monitor Saint Paul, online and print\n"These essays are rich, dense with information and images, and yet so clear-eyed in their focus and project. Like the hagstones―the naturally-occurring stones with holes, the 'stone monocle'