Cure a nosebleed by holding a silver quarter on the back of the neck. Treat an earache with sweet oil drops. Wear plant roots to keep from catching colds. Within many African American families, these kinds of practices continue today, woven into the fabric of black culture, often communicated through women. Such folk practices shape the concepts about healing that are diffused throughout African American communities and are expressed in myriad ways, from faith healing to making a mojo.
Stephanie Y. Mitchem presents a fascinating study of African American healing. She sheds light on a variety of folk practices and traces their development from the time of slavery through the Great Migrations. She explores how they have continued into the present and their relationship with alternative medicines. Through conversations with black Americans, she demonstrates how herbs, charms, and rituals continue folk healing performances. Mitchem shows that these practices are not simply about healing; they are linked to expressions of faith, delineating aspects of a holistic epistemology and pointing to disjunctures between African American views of wellness and illness and those of the culture of institutional medicine.

Leigh Goodmark is Marjorie Cook Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. She is the author of many books including
Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence, A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System, and Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism. She is also the editor of Comparative Perspectives on Gender Violence: Lessons from Efforts Worldwide.