African American folk healing / Stephanie Y. Mitchem.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mitchem, Stephanie Y., 1950- author.

Contributor:

New York University, publisher.

Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Folklore.

African Americans.

African Americans--Medicine.

Genre:

Folklore.

Penn Provenance:

Banks, Joanna (donor) (Banks Collection copy)

Physical Description:

ix pages, 1 unnumbered page, 189. pages, 1 unnumbered page : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York ; and London : New York University Press, [2007]

Summary:

Cure a nosebleed by holding a silver quarter on the back of the neck. Treat an earache with sweet oil drops. Wear plant roots to keep from catching colds. Within many African American families, these kinds of practices continue today, woven into the fabric of black culture, often communicated through women. Such folk practices shape the concepts about healing that are diffused throughout African American communities and are expressed in myriad ways, from faith healing to making a mojo. Stephanie Y. Mitchem presents a fascinating study of African American healing. She sheds light on a variety of folk practices and traces their development from the time of slavery through the Great Migrations. She explores how they have continued into the present and their relationship with alternative medicines. Through conversations with black Americans, she demonstrates how herbs, charms, and rituals continue folk healing performances. Mitchem shows that these practices are not simply about healing; they are linked to expressions of faith, delineating aspects of a holistic epistemology and pointing to disjunctures between African American views of wellness and illness and those of the culture of institutional medicine.

Contents:

Introduction

Historical paths to healing

Stories and cures : defining African American folk healing

Healing, the Black body, and institutional medicine : contexts for crafting wellness

Healing in place : from past to present

Today's healing traditions

Healing and hybridity in the twenty-first century

Healing the past in the present

Religion, spirituality, and African American folk healing

Hoodoo, conjure, and folk healing

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-186) and index.

Local Notes:

Kislak Center Banks Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.

Other Format:

Online version: Mitchem, Stephanie Y., 1950- African American folk healing.

ISBN:

9780814757314

0814757316

9780814757321

0814757324

OCLC:

81150114