Customer Reviews

Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies, Revised Edition

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HOODOO MEDICINE offers a wonderful blend of a history of the Gullah people and their herbal medicines, explicit description of each herb including many wonderful illustrations by Naomi Steinfeld that makes it easy to identify several of the plants, with an amazing cover image by the talented artist, Jonathan Green. Carefully documented, this book is not just the usual guide of 'how to use this' or that herb, but includes historical background -- not only a chronological description of the way this special island culture developed over time, but fascinating ancedotes of how the Gullah people used (and managed to save) their knowledge so that it's now available to everyone thanks to this book and the efforts of Faith Mitchlell and Naomi Steininfeld...This is a model for how all should be written, presented, and preserved that shines light on the fact these remedies reflect not only the special understanding of the people who used these 'good' plants and the way they can help, but that there are plants unique to regional ecospheres, and how lucky we are whenever someone is still among us to point them out! Faith Mitchell includes a poem inspired during the time lived on the island that captures the real heart of the book for me -- the island itself speaking about why She shares these gifts with those there.

Using the Sea Islands as a foundation, Mictchell provides readers with a fascinating and vital examination of Black folk medicine. Hoodoo Medicine also details cures used in the Sea Islands and the book includes a dreictory ofmedicinal roots and herbs. With a burgeoning interest in "traditonal" practices, I hope this book will find its way into the hands of professionals and lay people eager to support healing and wellness.

Dr. Mitchell reclaims the lost voices and gestures of African and Caribbean people who came to the US and made American life so rich. This description of their detailed local knowledge revitalises the past. We are grateful for Amazon.com's vast holdings which make such small-press treasures as Hoodoo Medicine available to researchers and lay people around the world.

A Unique Record of a Nearly Lost Healing Tradition

Reviewed by William Courson

The Sea Islands of the southeastern Atlantic coast are renown for their tropical beauty and for the Gullah people, African-Americans descended from enslaved ancestors who developed a distinctive language and culture. Cut off from the mainland, many of the islands were accessible only by boat as late as 1960, permitting Gullah culture to remain largely intact. Dr. Faith Mitchell, a medical anthropologist and former Clinton White House policy analyst, lived with the Gullah people for a period beginning in 1971 to learn for herself the traditional system of medicine still practiced by the islands' oldest residents, a knowledge that had nearly been lost and an experience she describes as `life-changing.'

"Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies" describes in detail the medicinal plants historically used by the Gullah people. The book includes a history in summary form of the Sea Islands, their settlement and the sources for this lineage of African-American traditional ("folk") medicine, as well as an exhaustive listing of all the medicinal roots, herbs and other plant materials, elaborating their applications in the Gullah culture as well as borrowings by Native Americans and European settlers.

This work captures traditional healing practices that have lasted far longer in the Sea Islands than elsewhere, but were once widespread throughout African-American communities of the South.

Shocked by the poverty and lack of any modern infrastructure in the more remote backwoods settlements, the author found a place where very little had changed since the days of slavery. She was most affected by the rich, fertile beauty of the Islands and by the strength and integrity of the families she encountered, possessing a natural wealth and deep wisdom that belied the widespread material impoverishment. At the same time, she discovered that the Sea Islands were also as abundant in culture - ghost stories, animal tales, the Gullah language, plant knowledge - as they were in animal and plant life.

These first experiences among the Gullah people led her to pursue a lifelong interest in African American history and culture.

"Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies" is a unique record of a nearly lost realm of African-American folk culture. It documents plant medicines used since the 1600s down to the present day, by the slaves and later their freed descendants. The Gullah healing tradition is one that has wed techniques and materials that originated in Africa with cures learned from the itinerant Moors, Native Americans and Europeans.

This book is a window into the Gullah tradition, threatened in recent years by the migration of families, the invasion of suburban developers, and the passing of the elder generation. The healing traditions of the African American herbalists have been largely overlooked, called backwards or adaptations of other traditions, and Dr. Mitchell systemically and effectively refutes such claims.

"Hoodoo Medicine" belongs in the library of anyone interested in African American history generally and its healing traditions in particular as well as of anyone interested in traditional or alternative healing and herbalism.

This is a valuable book, beautifully and lovingly written, that is inspirational in its effort to revitalize an important and nearly lost piece of history.

I really wanted to like this book. My ancestors are from Georgetown District, S.C., the center of Gullah culture; I have studied Southern folk remedies for many years; and I like the people.

Sigh. "Hoodoo Medicine" is twaddle and thin twaddle at that.

Mitchell claims to be a medical anthropologist, which on the evidence of this book is hard to believe. Anyway, she did some field work, evidently on Wadmalaw Island, in 1974. She took a few muddy photographs and collected information about how the people used plants, some native, some alien, but few of them part of their ancestral, mostly West African culture.

So far, so good. After a brief introduction to the Sea Islands and a shallow explication of what "Gullah" is, she lists a few score medicinal "herbs,' although botanically many are not herbs, something a medical anthropologist ought to distinguish, you would think.

It would have been wonderful if she had described how some, or even one, of her informants made diagnoses, gathered her roots and dispensed her cures. Not a word of that is here. You can find such information in Julia Peterkin's stories of Sandy Island (the novels "Scarlet Sister Mary," "Black April" and "Bright Skin" and the stories collected as "Green Thursday," all enthusiastically recommended), but not here.

Instead, we have a brief description of several plants, with line drawings that will not help to identify them in the field, with descriptions of uses derived from standard works. None of these plants will cure or even ameliorate any of the diseases they are listed for, and several of them can kill you, but Mitchell flags only one of these, jimson weed.

Even the title is a con. Mitchell distinguishes three kinds of use of plants: folk remedies, "occult" (hoodoo or witch medicine) and spiritual cures. The book, so far as it is about anything, is about folk remedies. It has nothing to do with hoodoo medicine. No doubt a title like "Field Guide to Folk Remedies of the Sea Islands" was less catchy.

Faith Mitchell unlocks the secrets of herbal medicines used to forge the strength of early afro americans in a foreign land. Well written. Looking for more, also looking for some of the herbs to try.

The healing traditions of African American herbalists have been largely overlooked, called backwards or adaptations of other traditions. Faith Mitchell systemically refutes these claims in her concise overview of our ways of working herbs. "Hoodoo Medicine" belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in African American healing or multicultural herbalism. Though written several years ago, Mitchell's lovely book remains a powerful and inspirational affirmation of African wisdom in the New World.

hoodoo medicine was very well written and informative.since i use herbs,i would like to read other books on this subject possibly written in the future by faith mitchell.

Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies, Revised Edition is an excellent book and very well written and very easy to read and understand. I was amazed at all of the folk ways I was not aware of.

Very interesting insight into early coastal life in S.C.& Ga.Blacks and Native Americans enteract and exchange information on many possible uses of natural herbs,plants and trees as treatments for a wide variety of physical aliments.Early European settlers adopted many of these treatments for their use.Overall,a well done short read and reference book.