Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-247) and index.
Contents:
Introduction : decolonial healing pathways ; tracing the curandera's iteration and perennial return. -- Curative recoveries. Healing from the moment of conquest : recovering curative (written) Roots --Modernity and border susto: las curanderas Simonita la Ciega and Anastacia RendoĢn --Prolific and plural : the aesthetic healing force of curanderismo and the key figure of the curandera -- Radical reimaginings. Post-Chicano movement Chicana feminist aesthetics of healing and transformation ; border arte as medicine: healing beyond the confines of the skin --Boundless limpia: the curandera's healing reach --The poet-curandera: Blood Sugar Canto's Chicana diabetic poetics. -- Conclusion : the curandera as neoliberalism's persona non grata.
Summary:
"In Letras y Limpias, Amanda V. Ellis analyzes depictions of the figure of the curandera, or folk healer, in foundational texts of Mexican American literature. It is the first full-length study to provide a literary history of representations that depict folk healing. In doing so, it argues that curanderismo, and more specifically the figure of the curandera, throughout literature is a figurative watermark that personifies both the continuity and discontinuity among three disparate historical periods of the Mexican American literary archive (pre-Chicano Movement writing, Chicano Nationalist Movement writing, and Post-Chicano Nationalist Movement writing). Ellis argues that the persistence of this figure in Mexican American literary tradition is an act of decolonial discursive resistance that poses a call for holistic healing"-- Provided by publisher.
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