At Ansha's

DARIA TRENTINI is an assistant professor of anthropology at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

"At Ansha's goes beyond the predicament of failing hospitals, and medical malpractice and misdiagnosis in post-war Mozambique. The ethnography elevates moments of radical care between Ansha and her husband Tiago, spells of (mis)fortune and of healing performances. Ansha's mosque is ambulant in its metaphysical dimensions. Constructed as a hut, and known for what it can do, the mosque offers responses to what biomedicine cannot see: ailments of the heart, suffering from absence, and uprootedness from one's people."— Amina Alaoui Soulimani, Kronos"This vivid, richly woven ethnographic account of healing practice in Mozambique offers valuable insights into the fluidity and flexibility of cultural and religious boundaries. The book captures the dynamics of agency and power in its focus on a healer's spiritual border-crossing, revealing alternative visions of experiences of culture and religion as continually re-constructed and emergent."— Susan Rasmussen, author of Those Who Touch: Tuareg Medicine Women in Anthropological Perspective"Through this ethnographic account of one healer in northern Mozambique, Daria Trentini evokes the contours of an entire social world. As Ansha works the borders between health and illness, tradition and modernity, good and evil—even life and death—Trentini shows how lives are defined by tensions and contradictions as well as attempts to ease them. By providing such an accessible and compelling narrative, Trentini herself works ontological borders between her readers and those she meets in Ansha's compound."— Harry G. West, author of Ethnographic Sorcery"This ethnography is well written and offers much comparative material for medical anthropology, cultural anthropology, and the social science of medicine. I recommend it highly for both undergraduate and graduate students. Daria Trentini has made a very important contribution to the understanding of the personal and professional life and development of a spiritual healer."— Patricia Barker Lerch, Nova Religio

• List of IllustrationsForeword by Lenore MandersonList of AbbreviationsAnsha's FamilyNote on LanguagesPrologueIntroductionPart I: Ansha and the Spirits1 Rural and Urban2 Health and Healing3 Wives and Husbands4 Demons and Spirits5 Insiders and Outsiders6 Mountains7 Coast8 Rivers and BridgesPart II: Outside the Mosque9 Makhuwa and Maka10 Books and Roots11 Muslims of the Spirits and Muslims of the Mosque12 Healers and the Governo13 Healers and Nurses14 Knowing and Not-KnowingPart III: Patients15 Good and Evil16 Closed and Opened17 The Dead and the Living18 Juniors and Seniors19 Tradition and Modernity20 Spirits and WomenPart IV: Returns21 Life and DeathEpilogueAcknowledgmentsGlossaryNotesReferencesIndex