The Witch’s Daughter
by Orenda Fink
Gallery Books, 2024
Paper: $28.99
Genre: Memoir
Reviewed by Katharine Armbrester 

Cover of THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER by Orenda Fink. A song can express seemingly inexpressible emotions, replete with yearning music and tidily wrapped up in three minutes. A powerful memoir can likewise provide a reader with the language needed to evaluate their own life and memories and give permission to say: “Wait, I was not the only one with this kind of childhood? And I have the right to write about it?” In The Witch’s Daughter, singer-songwriter Orenda Fink writes with graceful lyricism and fierce strength about being the daughter of a “witch.” 

Fink’s memoir opens during Covid-19 lockdown, as the author and her husband enjoy their solitary new home in the Mojave Desert while her mother quarantines in Alabama, raging, as she no longer has her daughter—i.e., her captive audience—at home and under her control. She obsessively calls Fink, who is expected to “absorb her expressions of doom.”  

I always drank when I talked to my mother. Most of the time it numbed me, allowed whatever she said or did to roll off my back. 

Fink grew up captivated and terrorized by her mother, who gleefully called herself a witch. Her family lived in isolated and rural areas of Alabama, such as Windham Springs and Ashville. The hobbies, homework, and emotions of Fink and her siblings were secondary to their mother’s demands. Fink’s mother never forgot a slight, wrong, or perceived injustice done to her, but she sometimes forgot her child’s birthday. Actually, that was done on purpose. Fink’s mother was skilled at meting out cruel and unusual punishments. 

One of our unspoken family rules was to never challenge our mother, even when we knew most of what she said was untrue. It was not worth the wrath that followed. 

Repeatedly, Fink writes of how—despite being smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt—she and her siblings were overlooked by the adults around them, including churchgoers. The young Fink decides she’s spent enough time among “respectable” people when her youth group leader “started dropping the N-word.” In a rare instance of integrity, her mother condemns this as well. Fink’s indictment of southern lower middle-class hypocrisy is one of the most memorable takeaways from the book.   

Despite her mother’s attempted hijacking of Fink’s preparations for the ACT exam, Fink is accepted to the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham and receives a guitar. When Fink and a friend start a band, the details of her travels and growing independence and confidence are a joy to read. However, her mother is only a drunken, accusatory phone call away.  

My mother wanted me in the kitchen. Wanted me in there to sit in my place, like I always did, and listen to whatever sadness, anger, revenge, magic she wanted to rant about through her blind tears. 

As her music career takes flight, Fink stumbles upon a book she has needed for years: Dr. Christine Ann Lawson’s Understanding the Borderline Mother. In it, Lawson describes the harrowing reality of living with a mother who has undiagnosed and/or untreated borderline personality disorder and explains the four types of BPD mother: “the waif,” “the hermit,” “the queen,” and “the witch.” Fink immediately recognizes her mother as exhibiting the more extreme symptoms of the disorder, particularly mood swings, emotional manipulation, and a lack of empathy for others. 

The book I just finished made no bones about it: if allowed, the borderline Witch will devour and destroy anyone she attaches to, even her children—especially her children.  

It is easy to find a “rage bait” online op-ed by someone wailing that their ungrateful Generation X or Millennial children have gone “no contact” with them; they rarely entertain the idea that they might be the problem, rather than their “too sensitive” offspring. More books like The Witch’s Daughter are desperately needed.  

Fink’s brave testimony illustrates that no, the mother is not always right, and not every mother loves her children. Sometimes, the charming southern mother is a monster. Clear-eyed and thoroughly researched, Fink has done immense inner work to assert her boundaries and repeatedly advises her readers to do the same. The witch’s spell is powerful, but it can be broken. 

Elegant, heart-rending, and engrossing, Fink’s first book is a remarkably assured one. It is reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson’s wrenching Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? Both memoirs detail the lacerating pain of being the watchful, careful daughter of an emotionally lacerating mother. Hopefully, this will not be the last we hear from Fink. She possesses the lyricist’s gift of an exquisite turn of phrase, and the musician’s ability to envelop her audience.  

The Witch’s Daughter is highly recommended for those wondering why a parent is incapable of respecting boundaries, expects them to cater to their every whim, or would emotionally, verbally, or physically harm their own child before allowing them to be true to their authentic selves. Fink’s memoir is perhaps the first of its kind from an Alabama author, a ringing song of courage that will one day be a chorus from more survivors—the children of BPD witches. 

Katharine Armbrester graduated from the MFA creative writing program at the Mississippi University for Women in 2022. She is a contributor to Alabama magazine, Alabama Heritage, and the Literary Ladies Guide, an archive dedicated to classic women authors.