Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors

by Perrone

The stories of ten women healers form the core of this provocative journey into cultural healing methods utilized by women. In a truly grass-roots project, the authors take the reader along to listen to the voices of Native American medicine women, Southwest Hispanic curanderas, and women physicians as they describe their healing paths. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the relationship between illness and healing-medical practitioners and historians, patients, anthropologists, feminists, psychologists, psychiatrists, theologians, sociologists, folklorists, and others who seek understanding about our relationship to the forces of both illness and healing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Medicine, Spirituality, Womens, Indigenous

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Sidewalk_Sotol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perrone, Stockel, and Krueger spoke with ~9 women of three different healing traditions. For the most part, their interviews, some of which spanned years condensed and edited down to 5 to 20 pages each, provide an introduction to a European-schooled audience about the perspectives of American Indian women healers, New Mexican Latina healers, and several Euro-American women doctors trained in the United States at recognized colleges and institutions.

I liked this book for its attempt to span the gap between middle class Euro-American sensibilities about healing and the medical traditions of other cultures. I am not exactly satisfied, though, with several things. For one, the authors did not attempt to verify any of the information they obtained through their interviews with other people, even people of the same respective cultural background as the healer. This makes it difficult to know how honestly the interviewees represented themselves and their work. (I getthe impression, after doing a bit of my own research, that one of the American Indian healers is a fake.)

Also I am disappointed that the book does very little to explain the social construction of being a "woman doctor" or "medicine woman."

Another major drawback of their uncritical approach is that the cultural history of some of their interview subjects become distorted. I particularly noticed that the chapter on Curanderas primarily ascribes the origins of their healing to the Spaniards. Considering that most, if not all, herbs used by these women originated in their geographical surroundings, this is an almost ridiculous thing to claim. Perhaps this is an indication of the erasure of indigenous culture and indigenous memory in New Mexico as much as it shows the lack of Southwest colonial history research by the authors themselves.

Overall, this book may be useful as a primer for further research, but it is not a particularly influential work.

[Athena]

This is a 1989 book about US women healers that is what you'd expect from the era of second-wave feminism: cis normative, gender essentialist (medicine is being reshaped by more feminine perspectives, etc), and white. The three main sections that are implied by the title are each made up of interviews with women, mostly born in the 1910s or 1920s, talking about their lives and ideas about healing. The authors position themselves as white women learning from their interview subjects and opening themselves up to different forms of knowledge and experience. The final section is supposed to be their reflections on that learning process, but only one of the authors reflects on it directly. The other two offer some not very interesting, generalized takes on women in healing and medicine.

In between the core interview sections and the authors' reflections is a section on witchcraft that's all over the place. It focuses on what people -- white, Native, and Latinx-- believe about about witchcraft and their approaches to healing ostensible effects of witchcraft. But there's nothing in the section from the perspective of people who identify as practicing witchcraft.

All the "medicine women" interviewed in the book are identified as Native, all the curanderas are identified as Hispanic, but all the MDs are white. There's nothing about how Black women have been more harmed than any other group of US women by "medicine," including by women practitioners (hello, Margaret Sanger -- she isn't mentioned). I'm not sure if this just wasn't well known by white feminists in 1989. Also, one of the "medicine women" interviewed for the book has since been called a "fraud" who isn't actually Native. I couldn't find enough info and don't know enough to assess that claim.

I've already forgotten how I heard about this book that made me want to read it ASAP. There are interesting parts, but I think this is more interesting as a book on women's history and biographies, not as a book on healing and gender.

[Kristel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent introduction to different healing systems across different cultures. Throughout my life, I have only considered Western medicine as my form of treatment, but I have now a better understanding that other people have worldviews that do not correlate to my own. I am now open to other healing practices, and I hope others will as well.

[Josefina Duran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book. My favorite was the beginning. I mean it is good for the work the authors did. It seemed they had began with Native healers and see the work put into writing about them. I was not a fan of the women doctors section. And the curanderas was ok. I liked it. I guess I was looking more from it. But I Really likes the women healers/Native women section. :-D

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so cool!! It gives you a neat idea of other healing traditions (outside of traditional western medicine) and also about women's role as healers and how women kind of play a unique role even if you are a traditional western MD you still can be a "healer"

[Lasca]

Almost done with this. It's incredibly thorough, authentic to each practioner's views, and feels very much like personal training. Found it in a thrift store for $.25. Love it, and wondering why these issues (women in medicine/ healing arts/ cultural perspectives), aren't looked at more?

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me way too long to finish! It is written by multiple authors, so parts of it were very interesting and hard to put down, while other parts were very dry and hard to get through. The whole book was very informative and enlightening though.

[Mariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

About alternative models of healing and women who choose their own path.

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading the personal stories. I liked all the accounts in this book.