Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit

Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit PDF Author: Arvilla Payne-Jackson
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 0313288682
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
This book combines historical biography with a focus on the role of the practitioner in the folk health-care system, and ethnobotany, including a description of the active ingredients of the herbs used in African American herbal medicine. The contributions of European Colonial, American Indian, and African practices to the development of contemporary African American folk medicine are discussed. In addition to showing John Lee's approach to folk medicine, the volume provides descriptions and illustrations of the main herbs used. Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit provides a basic historical framework and background to the continuing viability of a folk medical system based on a pluralism combining biomedicine and traditional health care. As such, it will be of value to scholars and students of medical anthropology as well as Black Studies.

Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit

Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit PDF Author: Arvilla Payne-Jackson
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 0313288682
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
This book combines historical biography with a focus on the role of the practitioner in the folk health-care system, and ethnobotany, including a description of the active ingredients of the herbs used in African American herbal medicine. The contributions of European Colonial, American Indian, and African practices to the development of contemporary African American folk medicine are discussed. In addition to showing John Lee's approach to folk medicine, the volume provides descriptions and illustrations of the main herbs used. Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit provides a basic historical framework and background to the continuing viability of a folk medical system based on a pluralism combining biomedicine and traditional health care. As such, it will be of value to scholars and students of medical anthropology as well as Black Studies.

Black Magic

Black Magic PDF Author: Yvonne P. Chireau
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520249887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book

Book Description
"Chireau has written a marvelous text on an important dimension of African American religious culture. Expanding beyond the usual focus of scholarship on Christianity, she describes and analyzes the world of magical-medical-religious practice, challenging hallowed distinctions among "religion" and "magic." Anyone interested in African American religion will need to reckon seriously with Chireau's text on conjure."—Albert J. Raboteau, Princeton University "Deprived of their own traditions and defined as chattel, enslaved Africans formed a new orientation in America. Conjuring—operating alongside of and within both the remnants of African culture and the acquired traditions of North America—served as a theoretical and practical mode of deciphering and divining within this, enabling them to create an alternate meaning of life in the New World. Chireau's is the first full-scale treatment of this important dimension of African American culture and religion. A wonderful book!"—Charles H. Long, Professor of History of Religions University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Significations: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion

Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life

Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life PDF Author: Stephanie Y. Mitchem
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1573567620
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book

Book Description
Black Americans are more likely than Whites to die of cancer and heart disease, more likely to get diabetes and asthma, and less likely to get preventive care and screening. Some of this greater morbidity results from education, income level, and environment as well as access to health care. But the traditional medical model does not always allow for a more holistic approach that takes into account the body, the mind, the spirit, the family, and the community. This book offers a better understanding of the varieties of religiously-based approaches to healing and alternative models of healing and health found in Black communities in the United States. Contributors address the communal aspects of faith and health and explore the contexts in which individuals make choices about their health, the roles that institutions play in shaping these decisions, and the practices individuals engage in seeking better health or coping with the health they have. By paying attention to the role of faith, spirit, and health, this book offers a fuller sense of the varieties of ways Black health and health care are perceived and addressed from an inter-religious perspective. Community and religion-based initiatives have emerged as one key way to address the health challenges found in the African American community. In cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, and Oakland, residents organize exercise groups, teach one another how to cook with healthy ingredients, and encourage neighbors to get regular checkups. Churches have become key sites for health education, screening, and testing. Another set of responses to the challenge of Black health and healthcare in the United States comes from those who emphasize the body as a whole—body, mind, soul, and spirit, often drawing on religious traditions such as Islam and African-based religions such as Spiritism, Santeria, Vodun (aka Voodoo), Candomblé, and others. Understanding the issues and the various approaches is essential to combating the problems, and this unique volume sheds light on areas often overlooked when considering the issues.

No Uncertain Terms

No Uncertain Terms PDF Author: William Safire
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743258128
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book

Book Description
Examines and provides comments on language trends while tracing the origins of timely words and phrases that discuss such topics as technology, entertainment, and everyday life.

Working Cures

Working Cures PDF Author: Sharla M. Fett
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807827096
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book

Book Description
Working Cures explores black health under slavery showing how herbalism, conjuring, midwifery and other African American healing practices became arts of resistance in the antebellum South and invoked conflicts.

A Mighty Baptism

A Mighty Baptism PDF Author: Susan Juster
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801482120
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book

Book Description
Follows the influences of race and gender on the Protestant tradition in America from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.

Jamaican Folk Medicine

Jamaican Folk Medicine PDF Author: Arvilla Payne-Jackson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789766401238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book

Book Description
This pioneering work is multi-disciplinary in approach as it examines the rich folk medicine of Jamaica. Payne-Jackson and Alleyne analyse the historical and linguistic aspects of folk medicine, based on their research, which included extensive fieldwork and interviews. They explore the sociological and ethnological dimensions of common healing and health-preserving practices which rely on Jamaica's rich biodiversity in medicinal and nutritional flora. As is the case with other aspects of Jamaican traditional culture, Jamaican folk medicine is largely misunderstood and subject to negative pejorative attitudes. This comprehensively study challenges some of the myths and misinformation. Particular attention is paid to cultural transference from Africa and the use of herbs in African-Jamaican religions. The work has an appendix and a glossary as well as a detailed bibliography.

Ain't Gonna Lay My 'ligion Down

Ain't Gonna Lay My 'ligion Down PDF Author: Alonzo Johnson
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570031090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book

Book Description
This text examines how African Americans have created distinctive forms of religious expression. Contributors explore the degree to which newly imported slaves preserved their African spiritual heritage whilst meshing it with Western symbols and theological claims.

Traditional Western Herbalism and Pulse Evaluation: A Conversation

Traditional Western Herbalism and Pulse Evaluation: A Conversation PDF Author: Matthew Wood
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1483417913
Category : Herbs
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book

Book Description
Pulse Evaluation is a pacesetter in the field of herbal and holistic medicine. It sheds new light on herbalism, holistic evaluation, and the age-old art of pulse-reading. "This is a monumental work, and an amazing contribution to our literature. I am always and adamantly of the mind that one's personal experience is of paramount importance, so there was a lot that I would not dream of contesting in your work. As you rightly state, nothing means anything divorced from the context of the patient's whole gestalt. There are many qualities you describe that I will be looking for in the future, or have felt and will reconsider the interpretation. Time will confirm or correct the three of you as the conversation unfolds. I am very pleased to meet Dr. Floyer and invite others to do the same." Brandt Stickley, L. Ac. Assistant Professor of Classical Chinese Medicine, National College of Naturopathic Medicine

Conjuring Culture

Conjuring Culture PDF Author: Theophus H. Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198023197
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides a sophisticated new interdisciplinary interpretation of the formulation and evolution of African American religion and culture. Theophus Smith argues for the central importance of "conjure"--a magical means of transforming reality--in black spirituality and culture. Smith shows that the Bible, the sacred text of Western civilization, has in fact functioned as a magical formulary for African Americans. Going back to slave religion, and continuing in black folk practice and literature to the present day, the Bible has provided African Americans with ritual prescriptions for prophetically re-envisioning, and thereby transforming, their history and culture. In effect the Bible is a "conjure book" for prescribing cures and curses, and for invoking extraordinary and Divine powers to effect changes in the conditions of human existence--and to bring about justice and freedom. Biblical themes, symbols, and figures like Moses, the Exodus, the Promised Land, and the Suffering Servant, as deployed by African Americans, have crucially formed and reformed not only black culture, but American society as a whole. Smith examines not only the religious and political uses of conjure, but its influence on black aesthetics, in music, drama, folklore, and literature. The concept of conjure, he shows, is at the heart of an indigenous and still vital spirituality, with exciting implications for reformulating the next generation of black studies and black theology. Even more broadly, Smith proposes, "conjuring culture" can function as a new paradigm for understanding Western religious and cultural phenomena generally.