Linguistics & Semiotics, American & Canadian Literature, General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism

Healing Narratives

Name: Healing Narratives
Author: Gay Wilentz
ISBN: 9780813528656

by Gay Wilentz

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Overview

In Healing Narratives, Gay Wilentz explores the relationship between culture and health. In close reading of works by five women writers - Toni Cade Bambara, Erna Broder, Leslie Marmon Silko, Keri Hulme, and Jo Sinclair-she traces the narrative and structural similarities of a main character moving form a state of mental or physical disease toward wellness through reconnection with her cultural traditions. Whether due to the history of diaspora, colonial oppression, or the subversion of traditional culture by modernity, illness can only be overcome when the cultural construction of disease is recognized and a link to the indigenous is restored. Wilentz's cross-cultural approach-African American, Jamaican, Native American, Maori, and Jewish stories-offers a rich context from which the basis of cultural illness can be examined.

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Editorials

Library Journal

In this unusual and beautifully written book, Wilentz (English, East Carolina Univ.) explores the power of words to affect emotional and physical health in the community. With examples drawn from contemporary minority women novelists, Wilentz shows how a kind of cultural sickness has permeated the lives of ethnic people, who are increasingly marginalized, cut off from their ancestral traditions, and urged to assimilate. Wilentz examines works by Erna Brodber (Jamaican), Toni Cade Bambara (African American), Leslie Marmon Silko (Native American), Keri Hulme (Maori), and Jo Sinclair (Jewish). In narratives filled with dark images of cancer, fevers, vomiting, and alcoholism, all emblematic of a diseased society, these women authors successfully mitigate the community's psychic damage through a return to native customs and beliefs. A welcome addition to cross-cultural and literary studies, this is highly recommended for advanced undergraduate collections.--Ellen Sullivan, Ferguson Lib., Stamford, CT Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.