"I like the way the author uses her field data. She works from image and metaphor, everyday language and common expressions, toward a coherent and systematic view of the body and of health and wholeness. She cycles from experience into theory and back again in graceful readable prose. This work takes some of the more complex issues of medical anthropology and puts them in a clear way that is accessible to a wide range of readers. One of the things I especially appreciated was the deftness with which the author let us know who she is and how she interacted with the people she writes about, without making herself a central subject of her work. Given the lively debates about the role of the researcher in the social sciences, this kind of sensitivity is to be appreciated." — Karen McCarthy Brown, Drew University