Kitchen Curandera

Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz is known as a “kitchen curandera." Curanderas are traditional healers who have practiced throughout the Americas for more than 500 years. Following in the steps of her maternal great-grandmother, Ruiz brings to her practice a knowledge of indigenous foods and “earth medicines” (the title of her recent book). She lives with her husband and near her daughter in Phoenix, Arizona, where she offers workshops and one-on-one healing sessions. With her sister, a midwife in Oakland, California, she created Nourished Mama, a program with recipes for postpartum recovery—always with Mother Earth in mind. Here, she shares her vision about the role of food in health, integration of traditional healing with Western medicine, and giving voice to a rich cultural heritage that was unknown or dismissed by others for a long time.