Granny Midwives and Black Women Writers: Double-Dutched Readings

by Valerie Lee, Lee Valerie

Midwives, women healers and root workers have been central figures in the African American folk traditions. Particularly in Black communities in the rural south, these women served vital social, cultural and political functions. It was believed that they possessed magical they negotiated the barrier between life and death and were often regarded as the "knower" in a community. Today even as medical science has discredited or superseded their power, granny midwives have resurfaced as pivotal characters in the narratives of contemporary African American literature.

Granny Midwives and Black Women Writers examines the lives of real granny midwives and other healers--through oral narratives, ethnographic research and documentation--and considers them in tandem with their fictional counterparts in the work of Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker and others.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Dr. Breeze Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing work. This is for anyone who is interested in reading books by Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, and similiar, from a lens that explores the connections of giving women the power to be midwives and being healers in their own communities to the loss of that and seeing it in the current state of health in Black women in USA today who no longer have access to the knowledge that their ancestors had; who no longer have that knowledge because the Western medical world they now have to rely on ignores knowledge of women's health and birthing through the vehicle of the oratory and folkore as valid knowlege. This is amazing book that shows the use of the narrative and fictional pieces that continue on the traditions and viable knowledge of these forgotten Granny Midwives. Thank you Professor Lee for doing this amazing work that give voice to a Black Female community that was historically seen and constructed by maintsream White Americans as "too ignorant to contribute anything to the knowledge in the world of Medicine". Even today, many black women feel the effects of this negative stereotyping when trying to interact with a predominantly Euro-anglo centric and White health care system. Anyone interested in the reproductive health of women shoudl read this book!