African American Folk Healing

by Stephanie Y. Mitchem

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.

189 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

Reviews

[veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this! Should be required reading for all hoodoo practitioners. I learned a lot about not only the history of conjure and rootwork, but the way it has transformed for us through time and how it works as resistance for Black people against white supremacy. I'm proud to be a rootworker!

[Chantel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly dense book given the amount of pages. I’m not a fan of the heavy academic tones, but I appreciated Mitchem’s insights on how Black Americans maintain our ancestral connections between spirit and the physical despite centuries of oppression. I think this would be a great companion book to Hazzard-Donald’s Mojo Workin’ because it’s like a primer for the more in-depth knowledge, anecdotes, and resources it provides.

[Larissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very academic book so it can be rather dry and dense at times especially if you have to ask what is epistemology 20 times before looking it up in the dictionary. On the plus side it is packed with interesting information about African American Folk Healing past and present. There is extensive use of reference material such as the Works Progress Adminstration's Federal Writers' Project which gathered black oral history starting in 1936. The author also provided personal interviews she conducted with modern day black American healers. This is not a how to book nor a guide to any of the different healing methods. A lot of pages are spent in discussion of how black history has impacted black health and healing methods even today and reasons for distrust in the community of institutional medicine. There is no favoritism shown towards one religious group over the other and so the reader will learn about perspectives of black evangelical healers to hoodoo practioners. Personally I found the direct quotes from healers of the past and present gave life to this book. I could have lived without the heavy academic style but my interest lies more in knowing what the healing methods are and the focus of Stephanie Mitchem is to provide a black perspective in academia.