Book Review: Homenaje a Nuestras Curanderas/ Honoring Our Healers

Homenaje a Nuestras Curanderas/ Honoring Our Healers,
Luz Alvarez Martinez, Editor, Latino Press, PO Box 7567, Oakland, CA 94601, $15plus
$3.50 mailing and handling ($18.50). In California, add $1.24 tax

Reviewed by Jane Zones

Homenaje a Nuestras Curanderas/ Honoring Our Healers is the initial offering of the new Latina Press. Luz Alvarez Martinez, Co-founder and Executive Director of the National Latina Health Organization (NLHO), created this book of stories by and about indigenous Latina healers for the Third Annual Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) 1996 exhibit at the Oakland Museum. The NLHO built an altar for the exhibit to honor "keepers of the curandera tradition that awaken the healing forces in us all."

The book itself is a work of art, printed in a stunning typeface on heavy cardstock paper of different shades, and beautifully illustrated with papercuts, photos, and drawings. It is ring-bound, allowing the book to lie flat and be easily read. All the writings are presented in Spanish and English, sometimes intermingling the two as the narrators themselves shift between the languages. It is easily accessible to readers in either language.

Seven healers are honored through their own words and from the writings of their daughters and followers, "como se ven, me vi y como me ven, se veran." ("As you appear, I was once, and as I am, you will someday be.") These women speak to us in powerful voice, knowing that we readers also have strength and will gain momentum as we grow, organize and connect with one another.

Five of the seven were born in Mexico, and four were immigrants to Oakland, coming as older adults to live with their grown children. Two were Chicanas, born to immigrant parents in Texas and in Los Angeles. Several were herbalists (hierberas), growing medicinal herbs in gardens that stunned their grandchildren when they were small with their colorful flowers. One was a midwife (partera) who had to give up her practice when she came to this country, and another massaged the tired, sore and injured limbs of her family and neighbors. One started a counseling center staffed by Spanish-speaking volunteers in East Los Angeles. They are remembered vividly by their children, grandchildren and associates in moving accounts that describe the richness and at times harshness of their lives. Several were great cooks who "healed the pain of hunger," or practiced sound public health by providing clothing and shelter to those in need, in addition to feeding them.

Francisca Muroca, a Mexican woman of Villanueva, was sought out by her neighbors to heal injuries and illness. When a young relative retired to her home to resume his practice of gynecology, she sat in the waiting room intercepting his parents to provide advice and home remedies saying "Go home, don't pay him. He charges too much and he doesn't know anything."

Natalie Delgado's keynote address to the NLHO's First Latina Health Conference captures the perspective of those inspiring women: "Each and every one of us is very, very important. We are mothers of a race that has survived and progressed in spite of all the difficulties and all the discrimination which we have suffered ... We are models of what a woman should be because we are descendants of a strong race that has never lost its spirit of struggle.”

This book is beautifully conceived and delivered, inspirational like a lovely grandchild.

Jane Zones is a medical sociologist at UC San Francisco and was an NWHN Board member from 1988-1996.