As a queer first-generation Cuban-American woman, reclaiming my magic from oppressive religious dogma and societal bigotry has been the foundation of my art practice since the mid-90s, when I started writing my fanzine, the Green’zine. Although my trajectory comes from punk rock, reactionary feminist art, and coming-of-age graphic memoirs about sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll—healing the soul is interwoven into all of my published works. When I eventually began work on the Next World Tarot, I knew I had to enrich my gritty soul with divine compassion; as well as forgiveness towards the versions of myself that did not accept ancestral magic and spirituality as part of my own healing.
Michelle Tea is an inspiration to witches and punk rockers alike, allowing us to delve into our magic without fear, shame, or submission to dogmatic religions. I would not have written a tarot deck without her inspiration and guidance, as it was originally a collaboration between us.
As Next World Tarot became more and more of a platform for my ancestral magic, Michelle Tea delved into this masterful text on Tarot itself. I love this book because it is a beacon for anyone who wants to access their intuition through tarot but does not find comfort or connection towards the gatekeeping culture behind it.
Tarot is complex and historical and feminist and revolutionary—and we do not learn that in most historical contexts. Luckily, Michelle Tea has both documented and exercised this truth for us. This book exposes Michelle’s unique experience and wisdom, merging humor, truth, grit, and tradition with our own means to radically change ourselves.
The beloved literary iconoclast delivers a fresh twenty-first century primer on tarot that can be used with any deck. While tarot has gone mainstream with a diverse range of tarot decks widely available, there has been no equally mainstream guide to the tarot-one that can be applied to any deck-until now. Infused with beloved iconoclastic author Michelle Tea's unique insight, inviting pop sensibility, and wicked humor, Modern Tarot is a fascinating journey through the cards that teaches how to use this tradition to connect with our higher selves. Whether you're a committed seeker or a digital-age skeptic-or perhaps a little…
Mya Spalter is a New York witch who learned the ropes by way of her ancestors as well as the Enchantments occult shop. Learning from both guides and NYC witches, I love the way this book shows how Spalter’s magic was conjured by personal connections to survival and home.
Gaining knowledge on both our magic and ancestral practices can be a difficult journey for queer folks, navigating the ultra-conservative laws of mainstream spirituality. However, magic is not conservative nor heterosexual—it is universal and a tool we can all access. This book showed me the divine connections between Wiccan history, self-care, and surviving as a queer person of Color in America.
Author Nyasha Williams, fresh from an outstanding Kirkus review of her new picture book I Affirm Me: The ABCs of Inspiration for Black Kids, has created a unique Tarot deck brimming with dazzling artistic representation. Tarot reading with worldwide roots is a centuries-old practice. It has experienced a bonanza…
Adrienne Maree Brown is one of the few witches and culture-shifters who have inspired my own journey as a Tarot artist and healer. She carries a legacy of Black queer thought, inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our relationship to change and survival. Brown’s wisdom and poise, paired with humor and rage, made me intimidated at first, as I was all rage when I began work on Next World Tarot.
Eventually, I found myself deeply inspired and enamored by Adrienne Maree Brown’s voice and presence. I love Emergent Strategy as both a radical self-help oracle and a call out on society, created to help us navigate truth. When I learned that change and revolution are the only constant, I spent years searching for a book like this.
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want.
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This…
This book is so deeply tampered with by society and Western modalities of health that a book like this is necessary for the act of reclaiming our magic. Black Queer Feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland showed me that collective care and radical love are vital ingredients to cultural work. Ancestral medicine and healing were not offered to queer folks, sex workers, people on many margins—and our right to magic has been taboo for too long.
I love this book because it names ancestral medicines and healing practices as necessary tools for community survival—communities that have survived centuries of violence. Community and survivor-led care strategies shaped my vision in the Next World Tarot, and this book articulates that vision as praxis. Centering disability, reproductive, environmental, and transformative justice and harm reduction, revolution becomes human.
Author Nyasha Williams, fresh from an outstanding Kirkus review of her new picture book I Affirm Me: The ABCs of Inspiration for Black Kids, has created a unique Tarot deck brimming with dazzling artistic representation. Tarot reading with worldwide roots is a centuries-old practice. It has experienced a bonanza…
I chose this book because my sea of recent titles and modern thought would not exist without bell hooks declaration on love. I read this book when I was about 19 and a survivor of sexual violence. That narrative built my work as a feminist artist and author, but my voice was reactionary, punk rock, and full of rage.
Vital to my art, I gave that rage life, but Bell Hooks’ All About Love introduced that rage to love. I would not have reached my vision of self-love, reclaiming spirituality, and radical compassion without learning the ropes from this book. In All About Love, Bell Hooks notes the trials and tribulations of reclaiming your heart and body from both societal and intimate oppression. To me, there is no book that honors the divine intersection between love and revolution like All About Love.
"The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet...we would all love better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, the renowned scholar, cultural critic, and feminist skewers our view of love as romance. In its place she offers a proactive new ethic for a people and a society bereft with lovelessness. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explore the question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the…
This is a semi-traditional tarot deck consisting of 78 illustrations created with ink, markers, and paint. Featuring body outlaws, endangered cultures, and anti-colonial belief systems, this book is an advocacy for global justice. Justice is about envisioning a world where true freedom relies on respect and revolutionary love.
In the traditional tarot, “The Fool’s Journey” is about growth—in the Next World, it's about finding the right side of history by smashing systematic oppression, owning our truths, being accountable to the people and places that support us, and therefore taking back a connection to our body that may have been lost through trauma or societal brainwashing. In tandem with reclaiming spirituality from homophobia, sexism, and racism—this book is a tool for reclaiming your magic.
