Granny Midwives and Black Women Writers: Double-Dutched Readings

by Valerie Lee

Midwives, women healers and root workers have been central figures in the African American folk traditions. Particularly in Black communities in the rural south, these women served vital social, cultural and political functions. It was believed that they possessed magical powers: they negotiated the barrier between life and death and were often regarded as the "knower" in a community. Today even as medical science has discredited or superseded their power, granny midwives have resurfaced as pivotal characters in the narratives of contemporary African American literature.

Granny Midwives and Black Women Writers examines the lives of real granny midwives and other healers--through oral narratives, ethnographic research and documentation--and considers them in tandem with their fictional counterparts in the work of Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker and others.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Lotus · Rating 5 out of 5]

The double dutched approach (what here shows up as -> ethnography + literature analysis + meta-analysis of knowledge production/the relationship between researcher and subject) is a super eclectic super Black feminist approach and I like it a lot! Like she presents a lot of ideas which are in the mix with eachother even if they are not so obviously related. For instance in chapter 4 Women Who Work Magic: Literary and Cultural Icons—Song of Solomon Lee talks about how Toni Morison's Pilate is always chewing on on something -> and how that is relates to the way that she is generous with others (she ponders things) ->but it also relates to the oral tradition-> and also the attention to her mouth is interesting in relation to grand midwives as quintessentially African diasporic (introduced a few paragraphs earlier) because of the Bambara tribe's practice of cutting umbilical cords with their teeth -> a practice which would be seen as unhygienic in western medical contexts which yes believes in germs but also forecloses on ancestral traditions as having to be seperate from science. She gets you to start thinking in these interconnected cross medium folkwore webs and thats so beautiful.

It can be easy to presume when she says "Black Women Writers" shes just talking about depictions of grand midwives in Black women's fiction OR she's just talking about the lives of Black women writers and how they intersect with the lives of grand midwives, when really she's doing both of those things AND she's also talking about what it means to be a Black women writer inside and outside the academy (and even what it means to be a Black women writer writing about Black women writers in such places).

It's easy to be swept up in the english of it all but its also clear that the historical/ethnographic research on grand midwives is of such a high quality. As someone who came to this book mostly for that kind of stuff I was more than fed. At first I was worried that because I've read many writers who have read this book or who were cited in this book I'd not get a whole lot from it but that couldn't be further from the truth. IN PART because Lee trains the reader to find their own webs to latch onto using their own methodology and values.

And Oooh I love that last chapter. She gives us homework instead of doing the work of connecting the literature to the history she just tells us a story from the field and we have to connect most of the dots. And this chapter is so compelling just as compelling as the active theorizing. And SPOILER the book ending with her failing to grasp the fullness of her research subject when called on it because she didn't have that sistah conjurer vision was RICH. like oooh I don't even want to say more because people should read this book. And it takes crazy humility to admit to such a failure at the finale of your book where it will stick with readers the strongest. She leaves things ambiguous (acknowledging the limits of book learning to convey truth) and does not self congratulate just for doing the research, because truly that is not enough. The book isn't necessarily "for researchers" BUT Lee knows that there's lessons that researchers need to learn and helpfully identifies the dynamic between the researcher and the granny in the stories (which of course come from, relate to, and live on top of real life).

It's really nice that this is the book on the granny midwives which is cannon. I think this moreso than a straightforward historical analysis is what our grannies deserve. Reverent, self-critical, I love it. I could talk about this forever!

[Dr. Breeze Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing work. This is for anyone who is interested in reading books by Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, and similiar, from a lens that explores the connections of giving women the power to be midwives and being healers in their own communities to the loss of that and seeing it in the current state of health in Black women in USA today who no longer have access to the knowledge that their ancestors had; who no longer have that knowledge because the Western medical world they now have to rely on ignores knowledge of women's health and birthing through the vehicle of the oratory and folkore as valid knowlege. This is amazing book that shows the use of the narrative and fictional pieces that continue on the traditions and viable knowledge of these forgotten Granny Midwives. Thank you Professor Lee for doing this amazing work that give voice to a Black Female community that was historically seen and constructed by maintsream White Americans as "too ignorant to contribute anything to the knowledge in the world of Medicine". Even today, many black women feel the effects of this negative stereotyping when trying to interact with a predominantly Euro-anglo centric and White health care system. Anyone interested in the reproductive health of women shoudl read this book!