Letras y Limpias is the first book to explore the literary significance of the figure of the curandera within Mexican American literature. Amanda Ellis traces the significance of the curandera and her evolution across a variety of genres written by leading Mexican American authors, including Américo Paredes, Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Manuel Munoz, ire’ne lara silva, and more. Ellis explores the curandera in relationship to decoloniality, bioethics, and the topic of healing while recognizing the limitations and spiritual shortcomings of Western medicine. Ellis argues that our contemporary western health-care system does not know how to fully grapple with illnesses that patients face. Ellis reads the curandera’s perennial representation as an ongoing example of decolonial love useful for deconstructing narrow definitions of health and personhood, and for grappling with the effects of neoliberalism and colonialism on the health-care industry. Letras y Limpias draws from Chicana feminist theory to assert the importance of the mindbodyspirit connection. Ellis conveys theoretical insights about the continual reimagining of the figure of the curandera as a watermark across Mexican American literary texts. This literary figure points to the oppressive forces that create susto and reminds us that healing work requires specific attention to colonialism, its legacy, and an intentional choice to carry forward the traditional practices rooted in curanderismo passed on from prior generations. By turning toward the figure of the curandera, readers are better poised to challenge prevailing ideas about health, and imagine ways to confront the ongoing problems that coloniality creates. Letras y Limpias shows how the figure of the curandera offers us ways to heal that have nothing to do with copays or medical professionals refusing care, and everything to do with honoring the beauty and complexity of any, every, and all humans.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s final book offers an intimate look at her extraordinary life and details her lifelong pursuit for gender equality and a “more perfect Union.” In the fall of 2019, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg visited the University of California, Berkeley School of Law to honor her friend, the late Herma Hill Kay, with whom Ginsburg had coauthored the very first casebook on sex-based discrimination in 1974. During Justice Ginsburg’s visit, she shared her life story with Amanda L. Tyler, a Berkeley Law professor and former Ginsburg law clerk. Their intimate conversation is recorded here in Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue, along with previously unpublished materials that detail Ginsburg’s long career. These include notable briefs and oral arguments, Ginsburg’s last speeches, and her favorite opinions that she wrote as a Supreme Court Justice (many in dissent), along with the statements that she read from the bench in those important cases. Each document was carefully chosen by Ginsburg and Tyler to tell the litigation strategy at the heart of Ginsburg’s unwavering commitment to achieve “a more perfect Union.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an advocate and jurist for gender equality, ensuring that the United States Constitution leaves no person behind and allows every individual to achieve their full human potential. Her work transformed not just the American legal landscape, but American society. As revealed in these pages, Ginsburg dismantled long-entrenched systems of discrimination based on outdated stereotypes by showing how such laws hold back both genders. With her death, the country lost a hero whose incredible life and legacy made the United States a society in which “We the People,” for whom the Constitution is written, includes everyone.
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