Safe in a Midwife's Hands: Birthing Traditions from Africa to the American South

by Linda Janet Holmes

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814258668
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	06/07/2023
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	1,075,756
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Linda Janet Holmes is an independent scholar, the former director of New Jersey’s Office of Minority and Multicultural Health, and a women’s health activist. Her writing—including articles in medical and feminist journals—has contributed to a resurgence of international recognition of the significance of African American midwifery practices. She is the coauthor (with Margaret Charles Smith) of Listen to Me Good: The Story of an Alabama Midwife, author of A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist, and coeditor (with Cheryl A. Wall) of Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara. She lives in Hampton, Virginia.

Read an Excerpt

In the 1960s, following the revolutionary overthrow of a British colonial rule that re-enforced white privilege, an estimated 200,000 migrants including Kikuyu, Luo, and Luhya peoples and various ethnic and religious groups abandoned environmentally friendly mud-walled and grass-thatched-roof huts seeking new opportunities in Nairobi. Unable to find housing, migrants huddled together in the place now called Korogocho. Determined, new urbanites recycled discarded tin, scrap metal, iron sheets, and cardboard to create Korogocho on the 1.5 kilometers of land they claimed next to Nairobi's largest dumpsite; although their numbers have dwindled, some midwives continue to be caregivers in Korogocho. While others spotlight the poverty and difficult living conditions found in these communities, I looked forward to stepping into a settlement that I imagined might remind me of stereotypic descriptions of Newark, New Jersey. What others might have called a slum, I embraced as my beloved church community.

As the van driver weaved in and out of traffic, I worried: Would the Korogocho midwives I was scheduled to meet be familiar with the traditional birthing practices of midwives who had provided care in villages generations ago? In 2013 the Kenyan government made hospital-based maternity care free, and government campaigns encourage all women to deliver their babies in hospital; given their proximity in Korogocho to a hospital, I wondered how midwives even fit into this picture. And I worried whether midwives would be willing to share any of their traditional practices with me even if they could. As an outsider who didn't speak their language, would I be trusted? Would they reveal to a stranger the ways of their grandmothers who previously served their villages as midwives?

In 1981, when I moved from New Jersey to Alabama to interview African American midwives about the traditions they sustained in their practices before the state prohibited the issuance of lay-midwife permits, I worried about being an outsider. In Alabama, I quickly realized that not only did the midwives welcome an opportunity to tell their stories, they welcomed the opportunity to tell their stories to me. Several midwives told me how glad they were that I was Black. "Usually, the women doing this kind of work are white," one midwife explained. Now I wondered what expectations the African midwives I was scheduled to meet that morning would have about me.

In Korogocho, from the moment I stepped off the van, I felt welcomed. Women and children rushed out to meet me and the translator to accompany us on our walk to the house of the first midwife on my schedule. The hip-hop music blasting from speakers and graffiti on the walls reminded me of a block party in my community at home. Taking my time to keep my balance as I stepped over the cardboard covering the open gutters and sewers, I knew to avoid looking down as I walked. Having learned to walk similar narrow pathways with grace when visiting healers in Ibadan, Nigeria, I focused on what was ahead, like the beauty in the abstract graffiti art that popped up on storefronts and the colorful African cloth hanging in doorways. And then I saw a woman walking toward me; I immediately knew she was the midwife even before she spoke.

"I am so glad you have come all the way from the United States to talk to me," the midwife, Naomi, said, welcoming me in a tone that I felt would comfort a mother in labor. Wearing a Sunday church outfit with color-coordinated blue flip-flops accenting the patches of blue sky in her dress, her style and splendor defied the Korogocho statistics that highlighted poverty, crime, high HIV rates, assaults, and sexual abuse including rape.

Seeing mothers with babies gathered at her door, now just steps away, there was no sign needed to know that this was Naomi's place. The dirt floor that I stepped onto in entering her home showed marks of being so recently swept that I immediately wanted to remove my rusty, worn red sandals before entering. But that would've made me look like an American tourist or a leftover 1960s hippie, so instead I quickly closed my eyes and went into a meditative space where I could focus on and feel the sanctity within the place.

Table of Contents

Introduction

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

Editorial Reviews

Through in-depth interviews and driven by personal passion and experience, Linda Janet Holmes weaves together the histories of African and African American midwives to share an undertold story of birthing traditions and justice.” —Linda Villarosa, author of Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation

“For countless generations, midwives have been a steady support to women, a stabilizing force for the family, and trusted leaders in their communities. Hope resides in their hands and within the pages of Linda Janet Holmes’s fascinating exploration of the birthing traditions of Black women from Alabama to their roots on the African continent. Safe in a Midwife’s Hands is a must-read on issues at the intersection of racial and reproductive justice and a celebration of the enduring wisdom of Black women.” —Dr. Natalia Kanem, executive director, United Nations Population Fund

“This is essential reading for all who respect and honor the tradition of midwifery. Catching babies is a physical, emotional, and spiritual art.” —Byllye Avery, founder, Black Women’s Health Imperative

“Safe in a Midwife’s Hands provides a rarely seen perspective that draws on lived experience and a keen sense of the human spirit to center the incredible role that midwives play in the birthing process. This beautifully written book pays necessary homage to the interconnectedness of the Black midwifery experience.” —Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, founder and director, Center for Black Maternal Health and Reproductive Justice, Tufts University

​“Safe in a Midwife’s Hands captures in vivid detail the power and endurance of Black women who protected life from the history of enslavement to the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement. Like the midwives about whom she writes, Linda Holmes has given us the gift of women’s knowledge and power at the beginning of life.” —William Ferris, cofounder, Center for Southern Folklore

“Building on forty years of skillfully listening to Black midwives, Holmes guides us on a stirring journey across continents, customs, and generations to illuminate the rich diasporic traditions of midwifery.” —Wangui Muigai, Brandeis University

From the Publisher