“Archival and speculative, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez’ A/An is a revisioning of the Salem Witch Trials into a portfolio of court ephemera, converging thematically despite and through its divergent forms. It’s precisely what we haven’t escaped of the Trials that blooms here: the spectacle of adjudication, the self-righteousness of the law and legibility, coloniality’s self-exception. Sovereignty is haunted: an invisable hande pushes us forthe. Gutmann-Gonzalez deftly summons the past and present’s continuity through this possible lyric alternative. A/An is a distillation, a reduction, a tincture of the ever-renewable past. Handle cautiously—this is yr book.”
– Jos Charles (she/her), Pulitzer-finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series; author of a Year & other poems (2022), feeld (2018), and Safe Space (2016).
“The witches, manuscript, and world(s) teem with deviance. Gender queerness functions to re-attune the body and/or its hungers, experienced in & off the text as [trans magic].” [read full review here]
– Crystal Odelle (they/she), author of Trans Studies.
A/An by Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez
Published January 13, 2024
ISBN 978-1-7381784-0-7, $35 CAD / $26 US
Categories: LGBTQAI2S literature, poetry (experimental, documentary, and erasure)
Subjects: Salem Witch Trials, history & archival studies, feminism
Printing: paperback, printed and bound by Coach House Press on 70 lb Sephyr Laid paper, typeset in Sabon, 12 pt.
Read an EXCERPT.