White Is for Witching

White Is for Witching, published in 2009, is Helen Oyeyemi’s third novel, for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award. A finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, White Is for Witching explores both traditional horror and the horrors of racism. Oyeyemi’s novels often center the experience of historically marginalized groups, which perhaps reflects her own background as a Nigerian-born English citizen who attended Cambridge University. White Is for Witching frames histories of racism as supernatural, casting protagonist Miranda Silver’s struggles with eating and loneliness as the results of ghostly forces. These forces target a house her parents inherit in Dover, situated on the edge of England. Once the family moves to the house, death and destruction occur, with Miranda’s mother dying and Miranda herself disappearing. The house itself helps narrate the novel, as the chapters switch from one narrator to another, moving from past to present and back, signifying the lack of boundaries between the living and the dead in the novel.

This guide is based on the 2009 Riverhead Books edition.

Content Warning: White Is for Witching depicts suicide, self-harm, and disordered eating. It also includes racist and xenophobic content, including offensive terms for Black people and undocumented citizens, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotation of the source material.