Gay Wilentz is director of ethnic studies and professor of English at East Carolina University and a visiting professor at the University of Belize. She is the author of Binding Cultures: black Women Writers in Africa  and the Diaspora.

In this unusual and beautifully written book, Wilentz explore 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. . . . A welcome addition to cross-cultural and literary studies, this is highly recommended. (Library Journal) Gay WilentzÆs authoritative, ground-breaking study is a must-read for anyone interested in the ways healing cultures around the world have opened avenues for womenÆs creativity and empowerment through healing practices and narrative. - Lisa Paravisini-Gebert (coeditor of Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santerfa, Obeah,) With its focus on language, colonial inheritances and efforts to move beyond them, traditional cultures and their impact on contemporary life, and its critique of the failuresùthe dis-easesùof the postmodern, postindustrial world, Healing Narratives is an interesting, original, and insightful study. - Melody Graulich (editor of Western American Literature)

• Women Writers and Wellness NarrativesReclaiming Residual Culture : African Heritage as Caribbean Cures in Erna Brodber's Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come HomeA Laying on of Hands : African American Healing Strategies in Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt EatersThe Novel as Chant : Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony as Ceremonial HealingBecoming the Instruments of Change : Maori Healing Visions in Keri Hulme's the bone peopleWhen the Psychiatrist Is Part of the Cure : Healing the "Sick Jewish Soul" in Jo Sinclair/Ruth Seid's WastelandToward (W)Holistic Healing