Safe in a Midwife's Hands

Birthing Traditions from Africa to the American South

Linda Janet Holmes

• Publisher: Mad Creek Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780814258668
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814282786
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Gynecology, Obstetrics & Midwifery

A Ms. Magazine "Most Anticipated Feminist Book of 2023" After a less-than-positive experience giving birth as a Black woman in the 1970s, Linda Janet Holmes launched a lifetime of work as an activist dedicated to learning about and honoring alternative birth traditions and the Black women behind them. Safe in a Midwife's Hands brings together what Holmes has gleaned from the countless midwives who have shared with her their experiences, at a time when their knowledge and holistic approaches are essential counterbalances to a medical system that routinely fails Black mothers and babies. Building on work she began in the 1980s, when she interviewed traditional Black midwives in Alabama and Virginia, Holmes traveled to Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya to visit midwives there. In detailing their work, from massage to the uses of medicinal plants to naming ceremonies, she links their voices to those of midwives and doulas in the US. She thus illuminates parallels between birthing traditions that have survived hundreds of years of colonialism, enslavement, Jim Crow, and ongoing medical racism to persist as vital cultural practices that promote healthy outcomes for mothers and babies during pregnancy, birth, and beyond.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Review Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Prologue
• My Journey
• Note on the Text
• Chapter 1 Korogocho: Massage Techniques, Spiritual Cleansings, Urban Gardens
• Chapter 2 Baringo County: Naming Traditions, Pouring Libations, Preparing Fermented Milk
• Chapter 3 Wolaita Sodo: Caretakers of the Process
• Chapter 4 Afar: Timeless Bonds, Smoking the Mother, Extended Care
• Chapter 5 Kpana: Healing Plants, Upright Birthing, Afterbirth Ceremony
• Chapter 6 Ejura: Lineage Apprenticeships, Spiritual Cleansings, Born with the Gift
• Chapter 7 Montgomery: Massage, Birthing Prayers, Burial of the Placenta
• Chapter 8 Lowndes County: Medicinal Herbs, Dirt Dauber Tea, Craving Earth
• Chapter 9 Selma, Dallas County: Outdooring Ceremony, Keeping a Birth Fire, Elements of Protection
• Chapter 10 Mobile and Beyond: Advisors, Advocates, Lifetime Caregivers
• Chapter 11 Hampton to Charlottesville: Rebirthing Midwife Traditions
• Epilogue Unearthing Black Midwife Stories
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author