For a Spell: Sissie Collectivism & Radical Witchery in the Southeast

Librarian Ezell debuts with a enlightening if somewhat dense history of radical queer communal groups across the Southeastern U.S. in the 1970s and their adoption of feminist witchcraft practice. Focusing on queer communal households in Northwest Arkansas, New Orleans, and Appalachian Tennessee, he shows how these rural countercultural groups served not just as spaces for local political organizing but also as an underground network in which queer activists under threat in the South’s larger cities could seek safety and “collective defense.” Seeing themselves as “both larger and smaller than the nascent national gay-rights narrative,” these communes embraced and nurtured different approaches to queer liberation, including reclaiming slurs like “sissie” and “fairy” and, among the queer men, adopting the tactics of radical second-wave feminism and lesbian separatism, including a nature-centric witchcraft practice. At the same time, they worked closely with vanguard groups like the Black Panthers to achieve broader, intersectional goals. While quite academic and theory-heavy, it’s still an eye-opening revelation of the fairly extensive reach—including widely circulated newsletters and regional conferences—of a little remembered network of rural queer communes. Readers of LGBTQ+ history will find this worthwhile. (Oct.)