African American folk healing / Stephanie Y. Mitchem.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mitchem, Stephanie Y., 1950-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Folklore.

African Americans.

African Americans--Medicine.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 189 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

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:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

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

ISBN:

9780814796351

0814796354

9780814759622

0814759629

9781435607361

1435607368

OCLC:

181105180