Healing Narratives

Women Writers Curing Cultural Dis-ease

Häftad, Engelska, 2000

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In Healing Narratives, Gay Wilentz explores the relationship between culture and health. In close reading of works by five women writers - Toni Cade Bambara, Erna Broder, Leslie Marmon Silko, Keri Hulme, and Jo Sinclair-she traces the narrative and structural similarities of a main character moving form a state of mental or physical disease toward wellness through reconnection with her cultural traditions. Whether due to the history of diaspora, colonial oppression, or the subversion of traditional culture by modernity, illness can only be overcome when the cultural construction of disease is recognized and a link to the indigenous is restored. Wilentz's cross-cultural approach-African American, Jamaican, Native American, Maori, and Jewish stories-offers a rich context from which the basis of cultural illness can be examined.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2000-11-01
Mått140 x 216 x 15 mm
Vikt340 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor224
FörlagRutgers University Press
ISBN9780813528663

Tillhör följande kategorier

Genusvetenskap inom Samhalle och politik
Litteraturvetenskap inom Skonlitteratur
Kulturvetenskap inom Samhalle och politik

Women Writers and Wellness NarrativesReclaiming Residual Culture : African Heritage as Caribbean Cures in Erna Brodber's Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come HomeA Laying on of Hands : African American Healing Strategies in Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt EatersThe Novel as Chant : Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony as Ceremonial HealingBecoming the Instruments of Change : Maori Healing Visions in Keri Hulme's the bone peopleWhen the Psychiatrist Is Part of the Cure : Healing the "Sick Jewish Soul" in Jo Sinclair/Ruth Seid's WastelandToward (W)Holistic Healing

In this unusual and beautifully written book, Wilentz explore the power of words to affect emotional and physical health in the community. With examples drawn from contemporary minority women novelists, Wilentz shows how a kind of cultural sickness has permeated the lives of ethnic people, who are increasingly marginalized, cut off from their ancestral traditions, and urged to assimilate. . . . A welcome addition to cross-cultural and literary studies, this is highly recommended. (Library Journal) Gay WilentzÆs authoritative, ground-breaking study is a must-read for anyone interested in the ways healing cultures around the world have opened avenues for womenÆs creativity and empowerment through healing practices and narrative. - Lisa Paravisini-Gebert (coeditor of Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santerfa, Obeah,) With its focus on language, colonial inheritances and efforts to move beyond them, traditional cultures and their impact on contemporary life, and its critique of the failuresùthe dis-easesùof the postmodern, postindustrial world, Healing Narratives is an interesting, original, and insightful study. - Melody Graulich (editor of Western American Literature)