Synopses & Reviews
"The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance."
Willis G. Regier, The Chronicle Review
"No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience."
The Times Higher Education Supplement
"The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes."
New Criterion
"Published in the geek-chic format."
BookForum
"Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs."
Tricycle
"Now an ambitious new publishing project, the Clay Sanskrit Library brings together leading Sanskrit translators and scholars of Indology from around the world to celebrate in translating the beauty and range of classical Sanskrit literature. . . . Published as smart green hardbacks that are small enough to fit into a jeans pocket, the volumes are meant to satisfy both the scholar and the lay reader. Each volume has a transliteration of the original Sanskrit text on the left-hand page and an English translation on the right, as also a helpful introduction and notes. Alongside definitive translations of the great Indian epics 30 or so volumes will be devoted to the Mahabhárat itself Clay Sanskrit Library makes available to the English-speaking reader many other delights: The earthy verse of Bhartrihari, the pungent satire of Jayanta Bhatta and the roving narratives of Dandin, among others. All these writers belong properly not just to Indian literature, but to world literature."
LiveMint
"The Clay Sanskrit Library has recently set out to change the scene by making available well-translated dual-language (English and Sanskrit) editions of popular Sanskritic texts for the public."
Namarupa
The second volume of Jinaratna's thirteenth-century The Epitome of Queen Lilávati completes his story. Embodied souls undergo all too human adventures in a succession of lives, as they advance to final release. The primary purpose of Jain narrative literature was to edify lay people through amusement; consequently the stories are racy, and in some cases the moralizing element is rather tenuous.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Review
“The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance.”
“No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience.”
“The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes.”
“Published in the geek-chic format.”
“Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs.”
Review
"The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes." - New Criterion
Review
"No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience." - The Times Higher Education Supplement
Review
"Published in the geek-chic format." - BookForum
Review
"Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs." - Tricycle
Review
“Persuasively argued. . . . A fascinating study that makes a real contribution to discussions of health, wellness and faith in America.“-Publishers Weekly,
Review
“An exploration of the history and practices of black healers and healing illuminating the vital cultural, intellectual, and spiritual expression of a people. This fine multidisciplinary work draws deeply and thoughtfully from the experiences and words of its subjects, offering alternative visions of human creativity, resistance, and community.”
-Yvonne Chireau,author of Black Magic: Religion and the African-American Conjuring Tradition
Review
“A readable book well suited for most academic libraries.”
-Choice,
Review
“African American Folk Healing is an insightful work that places folk healing within the context of larger spiritual, political, and intellectual movements. It illuminates the interconnectedness among activism, medicine, gender studies, folklore, and theology that influence the ways African American female healers work and live.”
-The Journal of African American History,
Review
“According to the author, African American folk healing sees sickness as arising from situations that break ‘relational connections of the unborn, the born, and the dead, which are intertwined.”
-Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Synopsis
The second volume of Jina·ratna's thirteenth-century
The Epitome of Queen Lilávati completes his story. Embodied souls undergo all too human adventures in a succession of lives, as they advance to final release. The primary purpose of Jain narrative literature was to edify lay people through amusement; consequently the stories are racy, and in some cases the moralizing element is rather tenuous.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Synopsis
Cure a nosebleed by holding a silver quarter on the back of the neck. Treat an earache with sweet oil drops. Wear plant roots to keep from catching colds. Within many African American families, these kinds of practices continue today, woven into the fabric of black culture, often communicated through women. Such folk practices shape the concepts about healing that are diffused throughout African American communities and are expressed in myriad ways, from faith healing to making a mojo.
Stephanie Y. Mitchem presents a fascinating study of African American healing. She sheds light on a variety of folk practices and traces their development from the time of slavery through the Great Migrations. She explores how they have continued into the present and their relationship with alternative medicines. Through conversations with black Americans, she demonstrates how herbs, charms, and rituals continue folk healing performances. Mitchem shows that these practices are not simply about healing; they are linked to expressions of faith, delineating aspects of a holistic epistemology and pointing to disjunctures between African American views of wellness and illness and those of the culture of institutional medicine.
About the Author
Stephanie Mitchem is associate professor of religious studies and women's studies at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of Introducing Womanist Theology, as well as African American Women Tapping Power and Spiritual Wellness.