In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

'There are two ways anybody can go when they come to certain roads in life—ain't about a right way or a wrong way—just two ways. And here we getting down to my way or yours. Now, I got a way for us to help Baby Girl. And I'm hoping it's the one you'll use." She curls her fingers tighter around his that's holding the ledger and walking cane. "Mine ain't gonna be too hard—really. Back at my coop, there's an old red hen that's setting her last batch of eggs. You can't mistake her 'cause she's the biggest one in there and the tips of her feathers is almost blood red. She's crammed her nest into the northwest corner of the coop. You gotta take this book and cane in there with you, search good in the back of her nest, and come straight back here with whatever you find." Miranda feels his body go rigid, but she won't let him pull back and she rushes to get through. "Now, I'm warning you, she's gonna be evil so watch out for your eyes. But, please, bring me straight back whatever you find—and then we can all rest. You look like you could use a lot of it, son." —Gloria Naylor, Mama Day "Illiteracy helps superstitions to flourish/' folklorist Fanny Bergen commented tartly at the end of the last century, "and it is evident that a very moderate amount of education would banish the belief in hoopsnakes, in voodoo charms, and in lightning-shattered splinters as a cure for toothache" (1899:8). She would be very disappointed in education's failure nine decades later: Hoopsnakes still roll down Southern roads, voodoo charms abound in country and city, and a variety of remedies—sans dentist—are still to be found to cure an aching tooth. In fact, as medical folklorist David Hufford noted, "in almost a century of intense efforts, bolstered by substantial legal and financial assistance, conventional medicine has not even begun to 'wipe out' non-medical healing practices and beliefs" (1984). If anything, they are more popular than ever (Hufford 1988). What happened? Or, more precisely, what did not? Part of the reason, unfortunately, is no doubt the fact that many African-Americans—old and young—continue to mistrust doctors and nurses. As one old lady told Gwaltney (1980:220): "Now, my doctor 265 10 The Best Thing to Do Is Get Addicted to God 266 The Best Thing to Do is white, so I tells him some and keeps some. All these doctors want to do is cut you or starve you. Shoot! I works harder than that little young devil I goes to! These whitefolks don' care nothin' 'bout you and me and they don' want to see us flerishin'. That's why so much of that medicine they always after us 'bout takin' is agains' us. These doctors ain' nothin' but whitefolks too/' In another instance an obstetrics resident asked a 43-year-old woman, pregnant with her twelfth child, if she had considered having a tubal ligation at the time of delivery? Her answer was a vehement "I ain't gonna have no white doctor messin' with my insides!" (Galanti 1991). The idea that physicians might wish to "experiment" on African-American patients is also frequently heard; in 1986 I was entering the office of Dr. Brooks (Bernita Washington's physician) and held the door open for a young woman on crutches. As we sat in the waiting room she told me that she had injured her leg in an accident at the university laundry. Two university doctors had taken X-rays and said that there was "nothing wrong" with her. But "you can't see pain on an X-ray!" So she had come to see Dr. Brooks: "He's not just a doctor, he's a surgeon, too. Some of these doctors at the university probably aren't even doctors! They say about half of them are students , experimenting on people!" If they continued to "mess her over," she said, she would sue. The fear that doctors will deliberately do harm to people in order to have bodies to experiment on or use in dissection is an old theme in African-American folklore. The "needle doctor," the "gown man," and the "night doctor" are terms that have long been used to describe the individual—often a...

Share