Letras y Limpias: Decolonial Medicine and Holistic Healing in Mexican American Literature

[forthcoming fall 2021]

 “Letras y Limpias: Decolonial Medicine and Holistic Healing in Mexican American Literature offers the reader great insight into the way the figure of the Curandera figures in our literature. [It] offers deep insight into the healer’s remedios and the items in her tool kit. The author shows that the healing of the metaphorical wound and of the innate ailments of a colonized people can and does happen via the figure of the curandera, who tends to the physical ailments as well as the spiritual needs of our community.”—Norma E. Cantú, author of Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor

“Ellis’ book of “decolonial medicine” gives us a healthy dose of what we need to learn about healing. These lessons serve anyone interested in cultivating wellness by giving us the tools to analyze the neoliberal profit-at-any-cost manipulation of the health industry. That these ideas rise up from the pages of Mexican American literature makes this book particularly inspirational; anyone can read about wellness in this way.”—Priscilla Solis Ybarra, author of Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment