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New York University Press
July 2007
On Sale: July 1, 2007
208 pages
ISBN: 0814757324
EAN: 9780814757321
Paperback
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Non-Fiction Biography
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.
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