The Curanderx Toolkit: Reclaiming Ancestral Latinx Plant Medicine and Rituals for Healing

by Atava Garcia Swiecicki

A practical guide to understanding and using Mexican healing traditions in everyday life.

Arranging ofrendas . Brewing pericón into a healing tea. Releasing traumas through baños and limpias . Herbalist and curandera Atava Garcia Swiecicki spent decades gathering this traditional knowledge of curanderismo, Mexican folk healing, which had been marginalized as Chicanx and Latinx Americans assimilated to US culture. She teaches how to follow the path of the curandera, as she herself learned from apprenticing with Mexican curanderas, studying herbal texts, and listening to her ancestors. In this book readers will learn the Indigenous, African, and European roots of curanderismo. Atava also shares her personal journey as a healer and those of thirteen other inspirational curanderas serving their communities. She offers readers the tools to begin their own healing—for themselves, for their relationship with the earth, and for the people.

The Curanderx Toolkit includes more than 25 profiles of native and adopted plants of Baja and Alta California and teaches you to grow, know, and love them. This book will help anyone who has lost connection with their ancestors begin to incorporate the herbal wisdom and holistic wellness of curanderismo into their lives. Take the power of ancient medicine into your own hands by learning simple herbal remedies and practicing rituals for kinship with the more-than-human world.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Latinx, Health

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2022

About the author

Atava Garcia Swiecicki is guided by the plants, her dreams and her ancestors. She studied Feminist Studies at Stanford University and received her master’s degree in the Indigenous Mind Program at Naropa University Oakland.

Atava has studied healing arts extensively for over thirty years and has been mentored by herbalists, curanderas and traditional knowledge keepers. She works as a clinical herbalist and teacher and is dedicated to remembering the healing traditions of her ancestors and supporting others to reconnect with their ancestral medicine. She also loves helping people build relationships with plants, whom she considers some of our greatest teachers and healers.

Atava is the founder of the Ancestral Apothecary School on Ohlone territory in Oakland, CA. She’s currently living in the southwest and learning to grow food and medicine in the desert.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, much needed for herbalists and healers with Indigenous and Latin American heritage. Very inspiring and helpful for clarifying and supporting your path as a healer or sensitive person. Supportive practices and perspectives for self care.

[Vee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written! Easy to read with so much rich history, information and love. I could see myself re-reading this book and learning something new each time.

[J. Muro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Home sweet home, at long last…Atava & Robin Wall Kimmerer are my favourite teachers/mentors.

[Jen Bracken-Hull · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gorgeous book about the survival and resilience of these traditions and their practitioners in the face of colossal violence and daily oppression.

This book was both practical and deeply rooted in a spiritual worldview that was a privilege to read. As medicine, physical and spiritual, Swiecicki emphasizes the importance of respect and humility for plants and for these traditions, especially if they aren’t a part of your heritage. White arrogance and those bent on cultural appropriation need not apply.

[Heather Dreier]

Must buy for my book shelf at home. Fantastic

[Victoria Salazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it and I found it very informative.

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book very informative. As a person dealing with chronic pain, arthritis, degenerative bone/disc disease, fibromyalgia and the depression that comes with all the pain, I found some promising natural solutions that may help.

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for my Witches in Literature class

[Tlahuilli Cortez · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Curanderx Toolkit met me in a place I didn’t know I’d been longing for. There were moments in these pages where I had to stop, breathe, and just sit with what was rising in me—memories, ancestors, old questions, tiny sparks of recognition. Atava writes in a way that feels like someone opening a door you forgot was yours, softly calling you back inside.

This book didn’t rush me. It didn’t pretend healing is easy. Instead, it offered story after story, plant after plant, in this gentle steady way, like someone placing medicine in your palm and trusting you’ll know what to do with it. I felt held inside the teachings, like the land itself was leaning in to listen.

What moved me most was how familiar it all felt. How it spoke to lineage, to the quiet wisdom our families carry without ever naming it. How it reminded me that healing is not just technique—it’s relationship, responsibility, prayer. Atava honors the teachers, the elders, the land, the spirits. And she honors us too, those of us trying to find our way back to something true.

There were parts that felt like home and parts that cracked me open. Her words made me think of the people I come from, the softness and the fire, the ways we’ve survived by remembering even when we didn’t have the language for it.

If you pick up this book, I hope you read it slowly. I hope you let it change you in the quiet ways medicine does—over time, through small openings, through the tenderness of remembering who you are.

I’m grateful this book exists. I’m grateful it found me when it did. And I pray it reaches everyone who needs it, everyone who’s been waiting for a guide back to themselves.

[Violeta Garza · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for every curanderx collection! If you don't already have a copy of this book, go get one right now. Garcia Swiecicki pulls off the sacred feat of presenting a work that is accessible, gentle, and full of the wisdom of tradition, while also updating it to be gender-inclusive. This toolkit elevates the work of other BIPOC healers by giving them their own chapter to share their gifts. I love how the author brings other curanderes along for the ride. And the book, it feels very good in your hands. You will be so inspired, you may just set yourself on a journey to heal yourself, your community, and your lineage.

[Karla Strand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the full review at https://www.spiritboundpress.com/lite...

Herbalist, teacher, and founder of Ancestral Arts, Atava Garcia Swiecicki, has written this stunning guide to curanderismo: part history, part ode to elders, and all healing goodness. Centering women of color and queer, trans, and nonbinary lives, Swiecicki successfully demonstrates how to meld ancient wisdom with modern life, one in which fighting for justice is just what we do as part of our daily practice.

[Mystique Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful look into Mexican folk healing and the various aspects found within itself. I especially liked the spotlights the author did on different curenderx’s and their specialities as it related to the different areas. It removed the mystery behind this folk healing and made it very accessible from creating tinctures to healing herbs, dream medicine, all while working to decolonize the way we view it all. Would recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject as a great entry point, it’s very accessible.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a small but mighty book, so much information in an easy read and follow format. I appreciate the author didn’t try to write a “how to” book but instead encourages readers to dive deeper into their learning and understanding with her book as a nudge.

This will be a go to recommendation for people who want to begin to learn about curanderismo, and I appreciated the individual stories that were highlighted to show the different ways it may show up in people’s lives.

[Peter Z.]

Nouns in the Spanish language, as spoken and allegedly learned in Mexico by this author, emphatically, do not end in the letter "x".

[Luna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a Beautiful book full of knowledge!! I absolutely LOVED it! I read it on my kindle but now I need a physical copy of it! Lol