A review by laurenbookwitchbitch
In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial, by Mona Chollet

3.0

“…it is precicely because the witch hunts speak to us of our own time that we have excellent reasons not to face upon them. Venturing down this path means confronting the most wretched aspects of humanity. The witch hunts demonstrate, first, the stubborn tendency of all societies to find a scapegoat for misfortunes and to lock themselves into a spiral of irrationality, cut off from all reasonable challenge until the accumulation of hate-filled discourse and obsessional hostility justify a physical violence perceived as the legitimate defense of a beleaguered society.” In Dense of Witches: The Legacy of Witch Hunts an Why Women Are Still On Trial, French feminist Mona Challet writes with scholars research and a keen eye about the injustices (straight, mostly white cis) women face in persecution from the witch trails of old to the present day. I picked up this book because Carmen Maria Muchado one of my favorite authors of all time wrote the foreword and I was intrigued by the theme. I must condense that as someone who has studied this subject at length, I didn’t glean anything new from its pages, but for someone interested in diving into to the topic for the first time this is an excellent read. It can be dense at times, with most of the subject matter relevant to the present day, Chollet still manages to draw interesting connections to the history of witch trials in Europe. Her research is superb but I found myself wishing the book was more like the introduction!

Read this book if you: are interested in the history of the witch trials, you are a proud feminist, you read a lot of feminist theory

Do not read this book if you: aren’t a fan of nonfiction, you don’t enjoy dense scholarly work