Reviewed by Tania Pabón Acosta

"The accounts of witches often remind me of how frightened the most secure people in our society are of the most vulnerable," Kathryn Nuernberger writes in her collection of essays, The Witch of Eye. The book proceeds to examine the history of accused witches to get to the roots of our biases as manifested in our justice system. As I read the story of Walpurga Hausmännin, a midwife accused of witchcraft whose coerced confession led to her death, I sit on the shore in my home of Puerto Rico. "After they tortured and burned her, they dumped her ashes in the nearest flowing stream," Nuernberger explains, in one of the first of many such accounts. When I get home from the beach, my mother greets me with the latest local news: police found the body of Andrea Ruiz Costas, a 35 year-old woman, partially burned and tossed near a creek in the town of Cayey. The use of fire startles me, and stays with me. As I read about burning witches, I can only picture Andrea. Of Walpurga Hausmännin, Nuernberger writes, "She says sorry so many times in these records. She seems to really believe she deserves what is happening to her." 

Nuernberger explains that, in many cases, accused witches would confess to witchcraft. This was a product of the inquisitors' relentless torture and manipulation. Often times, the inquisitors would torture the accused until they pointed their finger at someone else. In telling of Agnes Waterhouse, the author writes, "Government officials tortured her, of course, to wring out this weird confession, but they wouldn't necessarily have had to. There is ample research to suggest that a little menace, a little kindness, the promise of approval from someone in authority—this is enough, even today, to make people very confused about what they know to be true." We come to understand the driving force behind these confessions is the same as that behind the persecution—fear. By digging into the details of each trial, Nuernberger demonstrates that the devil villagers were afraid of was the unknown. Too often we have witnessed unfounded fear leading to violent acts. It is unclear whether the confessed witches became convinced that their actions constituted heresy, or whether confessing was a strategy to lessen punishment. In either instance, they were innocent people trying to decipher a system that was designed to go against them. In The Witch of Eye, Nuernberger provides us with a world where believing women is conditional, where the color of your skin determines your guilt. A world that parallels our own. 

Nuernberger's contemplative prose allows for the breathing room we need to internalize the injustices against those accused of witchcraft, mysticism, or divination. We can sense Nuernberger processing the information she's found, connecting her experience to this history of female oppression. Furthermore, the author allows us to insert ourselves in this analysis by injecting reflection into her accounts. "When you are afraid," the author writes, "it can be difficult not to hate the people you need. Sometimes I think I am the one calling it all onto my pail. Sometimes I think I am the mob. Sometimes I think none of it is real except for the fear." In identifying this core emotion as what propels hatred, Nuernberger highlights the fear in all of us, and therefore our ability to hate. Part archeological exploration and part personal narrative, The Witch of Eye reframes the trial of witches with relevance to our time. 

As she keeps a steady pace, the stories pile atop each other. With each essay, the tension increases, as we are made to understand that our biases are embedded in our earliest histories. "It wasn't until Frantz Fanon and other postcolonial psychoanalysts started to ask what in the history of ideas makes the madness of racism possible that the invention of demons really makes sense," Nuernberger writes. She shows us this madness with the story of Titiba, an enslaved woman from Barbados moved to the fledgling United States, and the first woman to be accused of witchcraft in Salem. Blamed for turning two young girls mad, and tortured extensively for it, Titiba never tried to escape punishment by accusing someone else. It was as if she hoped that the madness would die with her, but, in fact, "Titiba's words conjured what we would come to know as the Salem Witch Hunt." Her account depicts the roots of a justice system whose anchors in racism and anti-feminism made the existence of demons and transfiguration believable. In reality, we are the demons. 

While throughout The Witch of Eye we peel away at how we have arrived at such a broken social dynamic, Nuernberger does not leave us amid the rubble of the dismantled system. Instead, she tells us of Marie Laveau, whose "subterfuge in the service of social justice took the form of uncorrupted generosity . . . She was loved in return by the neighbors to whom she opened her home and steady listening ear." Marie was never tried for her ability to heal and was described in an obituary as "one of the kindest women who ever lived." This historical hiccup is a welcome breath of hope, further emphasizing how such stories are few and far between. By bringing to light this reassuring thread alongside the horrendous acts conducted against other supposed witches, Nuernberger reminds us that we are the problem, but also the solution. 

It is clear that, with The Witch of Eye, Nuernberger set off to unveil the "mythologies" of our troubled judicial system, to reveal the insanities within us, inherent and historical. But, she also unveils the kindness that can exist within us. Shortly after I finished the book, a telephone recording in which Andrea Ruiz Costas vented about twice failing to get a restraining order against the ex-boyfriend that killed her was made public. The friend who released the recording said that she wanted to show Andrea the kindness she hadn't received while alive. In the coming days, the case of Andrea's murder would spark a still-active internal investigation within the Puerto Rican justice system. It's important to remember Nuernberger's point: kindness is "so very ordinary that you or I might even try our own hands at such a simple spell as this."