Healing Narratives: Women Writers Curing Cultural Dis-ease

by Gay Wilentz

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813528663
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2000
Edition description:	None ed.
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Gay Wilentz is director of ethnic studies and professor of English at East Carolina University and a visiting professor at the University of Belize. She is the author of Binding Cultures: black Women Writers in Africa  and the Diaspora. 

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

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.

editor of Western American Literature - Melody Graulich

Gay Wilentz's authoritative, ground-breaking study is a must-read for anyone interested in the ways healing cultures around the world have opened avenues for women's creativity and empowerment through healing practices and narrative.

coeditor of Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santerfa, Obeah, - Lisa Paravisini-Gebert

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,"

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"

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"

From the Publisher

In this unusual and beautifully written book, Wilentz (English, East Carolina Univ.) explores 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. Wilentz examines works by Erna Brodber (Jamaican), Toni Cade Bambara (African American), Leslie Marmon Silko (Native American), Keri Hulme (Maori), and Jo Sinclair (Jewish). In narratives filled with dark images of cancer, fevers, vomiting, and alcoholism, all emblematic of a diseased society, these women authors successfully mitigate the community's psychic damage through a return to native customs and beliefs. A welcome addition to cross-cultural and literary studies, this is highly recommended for advanced undergraduate collections.--Ellen Sullivan, Ferguson Lib., Stamford, CT Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal