The Women Are Some Kind of Magic series by Amanda Lovelace contains three collections of poetry: The Princess Saves Herself in This One, The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One, and The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in This One. Each collection is divided into four sections, the first three sections of the books serve to piece together the life of the author, and the fourth works as a note to the reader. The poetry in each book is about resilience and writing your own ending, hence the names. They explore love, loss, grief, healing, empowerment, and serve as an inspiration to the readers. All three books include sensitive material like abuse, assault, trauma, death, eating disorders, violence, and transphobia.
Honestly, my favorite of the entire series is The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One. Though all three books are amazing, this is the one that really resonated with me. Lovelace published the first book in late 2016 and she finished the series in early 2019. I just recently read The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in This One, and while it is an amazing collection of poetry, I couldn’t really get myself into it. There are some poems that really spoke with me but overall, I was definitely more impressed by her first two works.
One of the interesting parts of The Mermaid Voice Returns in This One is that Lovelace includes poems written by others in the last section. In the first two works, she never included anything like this and the last section was generally seen as a note to the reader. I enjoyed getting to read snippets of other poet’s writing and I thought that with it being a note to the reader, it spoke a lot about the concept of getting help and listening to others. Lovelace writes a lot about women supporting women and warning one another of danger and I’d like to think that these extra poems were put in to remind the reader that having help from others is ok and to accept the warnings from other women.
With The Princess Saves Herself in This One, it was the first work by Amanda Lovelace that I had ever read and it was so captivating that the minute that I heard there was going to be a sequel I was automatically ordering it. There are two things that I really love about this book. The first being that Lovelace starts off the book with a dedication to Harry Potter and for some of the first few poems she writes about her love for Harry Potter and the way that the books helped her to cope with her life. And it was such a relatable part for me, Harry Potter was the first book series that I had ever read that I fully immersed myself in and just really connected with the characters. And to have someone dedicate their book and their first few poems to the book series that I also loved really just stuck with me. The second part that I loved about this one is the way the poems are divided. There are four sections: the Princess, the Queen, the Damsel, and you. Each section has a different part of Lovelace’s life and the way she connects her past traumas to princesses and how she managed to survive it by becoming “the Queen” resonated with me because it’s such a powerful response to come out of a traumatic experience and to automatically claim yourself as the Queen and as the most powerful. And it’s overall just told as a “story of a princess turned damsel turned queen” in Lovelace’s own words.
Having now read the whole series, I’m looking back over all of the collections and see how Lovelace grew and heal. And she’s using these poems as a way to help her readers and validate what she’s been through and the response that she had to these experiences. And then, in turn, she’s using it to validate similar experiences that her readers might have gone through. Just seeing how you can see in some poems that these experiences and memories still get to her and then watching in other poems as she’s coming to term with what happened is great to see because you see how she decides that these memories do not define her and she’s making herself into who she wants to be and that she’s deciding how her story goes.
All three books briefly mention events that are happening in the world when she wrote the books, but it’s more clearly seen in The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One. It focuses mainly on the 2016 election and the women’s marches at the time. There are also some poems that really resonate with the MeToo movement. And an interesting thing to see with these poems that connect to MeToo is that the book overall talks about witches and how they were burned and it’s very similar to how the MeToo movement is compared to the witch hunts. I think that these connections to these events int time is what really makes me love this book. It’s connecting me to these times again and really captures the feelings that a lot of women had during the time and it just reignites the rage that I had at that time in away.
A part that Amanda Lovelace included in all of her collections is a dedication to a fictional character. As I mentioned previously, Harry Potter for the first, Katniss, and then Ariel. These dedications and poems written for these characters really endeared the series to me more because it’s connecting me more to the childhood innocence that I had at the time when I first discovered these characters and I just love that apart of her childhood love for these characters as remained with her as an adult and that she’s managed to dedicate her works to them.
When I first read The Princess Saves Herself in This One, I was taking pictures of poems that I loved and really resonated with me and sent them to my friends. I highly suggest this series, if you’re into feminist themes or poems of survival, this series is definitely a must-read! And check out Amanda Lovelace’s website here.
If you have any suggestions for books to read or any tips in general, please feel free to reach out. We have an Instagram and Twitter, @homemadebookies, or you could email us at homemadebookies@gmail.com. Happy reading!
It focuses mainly on the 2016 election and the women’s marches at the time. There are also some poems that really resonate with the MeToo movement. And an interesting thing to see with these poems that connect to MeToo is that the book overall talks about witches and how they were burned and it’s very similar to how the MeToo movement is compared to the witch hunts. I think that these connections to these events int time is what really makes me love this book. It’s connecting me to these times again and really captures the feelings that a lot of women had during the time and it just reignites the rage that I had at that time in a way.
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