Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz by Joanne Mulcahy

Abstract

 Reviews reviews Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz by Joanne Mulcahy Trinity University Press, San Antonio, Texas, 2010. Illustrations, notes. 240 pages. $18.95 paper. In this fascinating book, creative non-fiction writer and folklorist Joanne Mulcahy recounts the story of Eva Castellanoz, a Mexican American working-class healer who migrated from Texas to the Pacific Northwest. Castellanoz follows national migratory patterns that led many Tejanas/os to move to the Pacific Northwest in search of better opportunities. Mulcahy’s work underlines and fills the gap for the much-needed historiography of Mexican American and Chicanas’ experiences in the Pacific Northwest. Migration studies have lagged behind in the Pacific Northwest,having focused mostly in the Southwest and more recently in the Midwest. Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz has made a significant inroad in the historiography of this neglected region and frames gender as the category of analysis through which race and sexuality collide. The author explains the process of Mexican Americans’ marginalization and how social systems of oppression devalue the life and experiences of particular populations in the United States. To center gender as a category of analysis,Mulcahy traces the life of Mexican American healer and artist Eva Castellanoz. The book feels like a metaphor within a metaphor in which Mulcahy’s skill as a creative writer links the non-linear narrative with ethnographic material, re-inscribing a new academic methodology that blends creative nonfiction with testimonios (oral histories). Mulcahy’s creative narrative slowly discloses the world that surrounds Castellanoz’s social realities, her economic and political marginalization . The history of Mexican Americans in the United States is narrated via Castellanoz’s experiences, and her life tribulations mark the oppressive systems that surround this population. Mulcahy follows Castellanoz’s life over a decade and becomes a valued friend as she queries the prominent healer. The book is structured like a book of healing prescriptions for life, interweaving Castellanoz’s powerful life with historical accounts of Mexicans in the Pacific Northwest. Mulcahy opens every chapter with an ailment and a remedy, resembling a session with a healer. In other words, Castellanoz’s life becomes a metaphor for social justice healing,as it were.While this is a historical account of Eva Castellanoz — healer,artist, activist, and community leader — the book also details a life of resistance to the oppression that forced her family to leave their homes in Texas and migrate to the Pacific Northwest, where racial discrimination was also rampant. In her new geographic space,Castellanoz commits herself to social justice that will benefit those who have been systematically marginalized : people of Mexican descent. Mulcahy outlines how Castellanoz conquers public spaces through her healing methods and her art. By creating traditional coronas, centerpieces made of wax flowers and paper for celebrations, Castellanoz counters maledominated geographic locations and thereby establishes a metaphor for change and resistance . According to Mulcahy, Castellanoz re-inscribes the notion of religious faith by feminizing and resisting patriarchal systems of power that control religious belief systems. As an altarista herself, Castellanoz conquers the world of organized religion and its sexist monopoly. Castellanoz, then, is the mediator by which a connection to a higher power is accomplished, challenging the priesthood’s  OHQ vol. 112, no. 3 domination of sacred spaces. Castellanoz creates a new language — a feminine language — to communicate with what she believes to be a higher force. Mulcahy’s organization of the book metaphorically describes her own identification with the subject as well as the vital transformation she underwent as a white, privileged woman working with a Mexican American curandera (healer). Through a series of enfermedades and remedios, Mulcahy reveals Castellanoz ’s trajectory as well as her own while she learned the reality of social and racial discrepanciessurroundingourroutine ,mundanelives. With a curiosity that deserves merit, Mulcahy befriends Castellanoz and finds a place where she may align herself vis-à-vis such a powerful, resilient yet vulnerable woman. Both Mulcahy and Castellanoz advocate social justice and gender equity, yet they approach these topics differently. While Mulcahy writes a text of resistance and ethnographic richness, Castellanoz traces with her own body the lives of Mexican Americans and their struggles against marginalization and outright racial hostility...