We Were Witches

We Were Witches is a 2017 novel by Ariel Gore. It is a first-person narrative of a fictionalized version of the author, of her life as a teen mom and budding feminist, from the birth of her daughter when she was 18 years old, to her graduation from Mills College.

Buying into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself and talks her way into college. But once she’s there, phallocratic narratives permeate every subject.

Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single lesbian mother as she’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming unconventional women into passive citizenship.