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- Working the Roots by Michele E. Lee
Working the Roots by Michele E. Lee
WORKING THE ROOTS Over 400 YEARS of TRADITIONAL African American Healing by MICHELE LEE
Brief Description:
"African American traditional medicine is an American classic that emerged out of the necessity of its people to survive. It began with the healing knowledge brought with the African captives on the slave ships and later merged with Native American, European and other healing traditions to become a full-fledged body of medicinal practices that has lasted in various forms down to the present day. Working the Roots: Over 400 Years Of Traditional African American Healing is the result of first-hand interviews, conversations, and apprenticeships conducted and experienced by author Michele E. Lee over several years of living and studying in the rural South and in the West Coast regions of the United States. She combines a novelist's keen ear for storytelling and dialogue and a healer's understanding of folk medicine arts into a book that makes for both pleasant, interesting reading, and serves as a permanent household healing guide. Divided between sections on interviews of healers and their stories and a comprehensive collection of traditional African American medicines, remedies, and the many common ailments they were called upon to cure, Working The Roots is a valuable addition to African American history and American and African folk healing practices."--Page [4] of cover.
Review Quotes:
"A blessing for generations to come, Michele Lee's Working the Roots is the result of meticulous research and compelling storytelling. This almost-lost knowledge rekindles the passionate fire of primordial African holistic healing for an audience whose survival just may count on it."
R. Dafina Kuficha
Practicing acupuncturist, health educator, and spiritual counselor
"I love this book! Working the Roots is an impressively well-written account of African American root medicine that reads like an adventure novel and is hard to put down. The book is an invaluable treasure for anthropologists, ethno-botanists, historians, herbalists, and others wanting a look inside the uncharted terrain of African American root and folk medicine."
Dr. Gail P. Myers
Cultural Anthropologist and filmmaker
"Working the Roots is an example and testimony of African tradition that permeates the Americas and speaks to the widespread and in-depth knowledge African people possess about health and healing. Luck for us to now have this wealth of invaluable knowledge at our finger-tips."
Opal Palmer Adisa
Distinguished professor, poet, novelist, and photographer
"This book is fundamental to the deeper understudying of a culture that usually is glossed over and commandeered or down played way too often. Working The Roots is my story as it is in many different degrees, the story of all Afro-Americans."
Opensanwo Ifakorede Fadario
Traditional health consultant, healer, visual artist, and initiated Ifa practitioner
Table of Contents:
PART I: HEALING NARRATIVES
Chapter 1 - Reclaiming Our Natural Healing Tradition
Chapter 2 - Strong Medicine
Chapter 3 - Spirit Work
Chapter 4 - Coming Full Circle
PART II - THE AILMENTS AND MEDICINES
Chapter 5 - Preventive Health Care
Chapter 6 - The Ailments And Their Remedies
Chapter 7 - Animal Care
Chapter 8 - The Medicines
Chapter 9 - Working The Powers: Conjurin' And Hoodoo Remedies
Index of Images
Glossary of Cultural Terms
Glossary of Medicinal Properties
Bibliography
Publisher Marketing:
African American traditional medicine is an American classic that emerged out of the necessity of its people to survive. It began with the healing knowledge brought with the African captives on the slave ships and later merged with Native American, European and other healing traditions to become a full-fledged body of medicinal practices that has lasted in various forms down to the present day.
Working the Roots: Over 400 Years Of Traditional African American Healing is the result of first-hand interviews, conversations, and apprenticeships conducted and experienced by author Michele E. Lee over several years of living and studying in the rural South and in the West Coast regions of the United States. She combines a novelist's keen ear for storytelling and dialogue and a healer's understanding of folk medicine arts into a book that makes for both pleasant, interesting reading, and serves as a permanent household healing guide.
Divided between sections on interviews of healers and their stories and a comprehensive collection of traditional African American medicines, remedies, and the many common ailments they were called upon to cure, Working The Roots is a valuable addition to African American history and American and African folk healing practices.
Contributor Bio:
Michele Elizabeth Lee has worked for over 30 years in the integrated arts field as a visual arist, curator, administrator, educator, and writer. She has a MFA from the University of Southern California and a BA from Antioch College. She is a native of Oakland, California, who was raised in a family of traditional healers from the South. She currently lives and works in her native Oakland, where she teaches art in a public school. She has two adult children, Milon and Nora.