The Historian as Curandera

Aurora Levins Morales is an historian, artist, healer, activist, and teacher. Her work focuses on generational trauma of people of color’s experience of racial violence and the healing properties of storytelling and history telling. She is the author of numerous books, including Medicine Stories: History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity and Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas. Her essay, “The Historian as Curandera,” has been widely taught in Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies programs as well as community spaces. Medicine Stories, which was originally published in 1998 by South End Press, will be re-released in 2018 in an updated version, titled Medicine Stories: Essay for Radicals. Her work also includes the podcast “Letters from Earth,” a poetic journalism project–part travelogue, part documentary–which explores the impacts of environmental injustice on our country and our bodies.