Synopses & Reviews
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 of both — Tea’s essential guide opens the power of tarot to you. Modern Tarot doesn’t require you to believe in the supernatural or narrowly focus on the tarot as a divination tool. Tea instead provides incisive descriptions of each of the 78 cards in the tarot system — each illustrated in the charmingly offbeat style of cartoonist Amanda Verwey—and introduces specially designed card-based rituals that can be used with any deck to guide you on a path toward radical growth and self-improvement.
Tea reveals how tarot offers moments of deep, transformative connection — an affirming, spiritual experience that is gentle, individual, and aspirational. Grounded in Tea’s twenty-five years of tarot wisdom and her abiding love of the cards, and featuring 78 black and white illustrations throughout, Modern Tarot is the ultimate introduction to the tradition of the tarot for millennial readers.
About the Author
Michelle Tea is the author of five memoirs: The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America, Valencia (now a film), The Chelsea Whistle, Rent Girl (illustrated) and How to Grow Up (Penguin/Plume), currently in development with Amazon Studios. Her novels include Mermaid in Chelsea Creek and Girl at the Bottom of the Sea, part of a Young Adult fantasy trilogy published by McSweeneys, and Rose of No Man’s Land. Black Wave is a dystopic memoir-fiction hybrid. Forthcoming works include Castle on the River Vistula, the final installment of the YA series, and Modern Tarot, a tarot how-to and spell book published by Harper Elixir.
Tea is the curator of the Amethyst Editions imprint at Feminist Press. She founded the literary non-profit RADAR Productions and the international Sister Spit performance tours, and is the former editor of Sister Spit Books, an imprint of City Lights. She created Mutha Magazine, an online publication about real-life parenting. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Cosmopolitan, The Believer, Marie Clare, n+1, xoJane, California Sunday Magazine, Buzzfeed and many other print and web publications.