Aurora Levins Morales

This new collection of poetry and prose explores the body as a site of pleasure, pain and political struggle. Disabled and chronically ill writer, historian and activist Aurora Levins Morales writes about epilepsy and stroke, the social control of dark skinned women's sexuality and the erotics of chronic fatigue, epigenetics and healing justice, community based science and what it's like to get health care in Cuba. "Aurora's writing is itself a kind of alchemy, balancing emotional nuance with rich historical context, simultaneously speaking in an intimate, personal voice and for a collective we. She offers us vulnerable, power-filled lyricism that moves the audience to new understandings of their own lives, as she claims her body's pleasure and pain." Patty Berne, Co-founder and Artistic Director, Sins Invalid. "Medically, “kindling” refers to the way bodies can be sensitized by small, repeated exposures to chemicals or electric shocks. Aurora’s essays and poems about the human body’s responses to oppression describe both the kindling of disease and of consciousness, fragments of tinder that ignite into a blazing awareness of our bodies as sites of struggle and transformation." Casimira Fuentes O’Neill, M.D.

In this revised and expanded edition of Medicine Stories , Aurora Levins Morales weaves together insights and lessons learned over a lifetime of activism to offer a new theory of social justice. Calling for a politics of integrity that recognizes the complicated wholeness of individual and collective lives, Levins Morales delves among the interwoven roots of multiple oppressions, exposing connections, crafting strategies, and uncovering the wellsprings of resilience and joy. Throughout these twenty-eight essays—twenty-one of which are new or extensively revised—she exposes the structures and mechanisms that silence voices and divide movements. The result is a medicine bag full of techniques and perspectives to build a universal solidarity that is flexible, nuanced, and strong enough to fundamentally shift our world toward justice. Intimately personal and globally relevant, Medicine Stories brings clarity and hope to tangled, emotionally charged social issues in beautiful and accessible language. Table of Contents: Ecology is everything Bigger is better My feminism Identity and solidarity The power of story The truths our bodies tell False memories : trauma and liberation The historian as curandera Night flying : power, memory, and magic What race isn't : teaching about racism Racism : rootedness as spiritual and political practice The politics of childhood On not writing English Forked tongues : on not speaking Spanish Certified organic intellectual Ban me! The tribe of Guarayamín Taino citizenship Speaking of antisemitism BDS and me Puerto Ricans and Jews Class, privilege and loss Nadie La Tiene : land, ecology and nationalism Torturers Histerimonia : declarations of a trafficked girl or Why I couldn't write this essay Building radical soil Circle unbroken : the politics of inclusion Tai : a Yom Kippur sermon, 5778/2017

Drawing vibrant connections between the colonization of whole nations, the health of the mountainsides and the abuse of individual women, children and men, Medicine Stories offers the paradigm of integrity as a political model to people who hunger for a world of justice, health and love.

Full of medical folklore and healing tales, Remedios presents the history of the many women—and cultures—who have met at the crossroads of the islands of Puerto Rico. Beginning with the First Mother in sub-Saharan Africa more than 200,000 years ago, Aurora Levins Morales takes readers on a journey through time and around the globe. We learn of Juana de Asbaje, author of the "Reply to Sor Filotea" in 1693, the first feminist essay written in the New World; Gracia Nasi, Constantinople's "Queen of the Jews"; the African-American activist and warrior of words Ida B. Wells; and the unlikely martyr and symbol, Ethel Rosenberg. Levins Morales weaves in her own story of pain and healing, ameliorated by the restorative power of memory, and bears witness to a larger history of resistance and abuse by women and men. This historical memoir revives our connection to the forgotten lore of our grandmothers, featuring explanations of the medicinal properties of herbs and and foods such as rosemary, ginkgo, and banana. With love, joy, and defiance, Levins Morales offers Remedios as testimony to those barely recorded or known to his tory, the women who shaped our world. Aurora Levins Morales is author of Medicine History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity (South End Press, 1998) and Getting Home Alive (Firebrand, 1986). A Jewish "red diaper baby" from the mountains of Puerto Rico, Morales writes lucidly about the complexities of social identity. She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. [box] Also available from South End Press Medicine History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity TC $14.00, 0-89608-581-3 o CUSA DeColores Means All of Us TP $18.00, 0-89608-583-X o CUSA Loving in the War Years TP $17.00, 0-89608-626-7 o CUSA