Title
African American Folk Healing / Stephanie Mitchem.
ISBN
9780814759622
Published
New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2007]
Copyright
©2007
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers
10.18574/nyu/9780814759622.001.0001 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
398.2089/96073
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.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780814757314
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I Historical Paths to Healing
1 Stories and Cures: Defining African American Folk Healing
2 Healing, the Black Body, and Institutional Medicine: Contexts for Crafting Wellness
3 Healing in Place: From Past to Present
II Today's Healing Traditions
4 Healing and Hybridity in the Twenty-First Century
5 Healing the Past in the Present
6 Religion, Spirituality, and African American Folk Healing
7 Hoodoo, Conjure, and Folk Healing
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
