Healing Movements - by Megan S Raschig

About the Book

"How women and men involved in a grassroots abolitionist project of cultural healing counter the carceral state and build otherwise in a Chicanx community in California"--

Book Synopsis

How a grassroots abolitionist project of cultural healing counters the carceral state in a Chicanx community in California

For many, gang involvement can be a guaranteed life sentence, a force which traps them in an inescapable cycle of violence even if it does not lead to actual prison time. Healing Movements explores the work of formerly gang-involved Chicanx men and women in California who draw on the social connections made during their gang-involved years to forge new pathways for cultural healing and countering the carceral system.

Known colloquially as the "movement of healing," this Chicanx-Indigenous abolitionist project based in Salinas, California, was spurred on by a series of four police homicides of Latino men in 2014. Organizing around such issues as police brutality and mass incarceration, these collectives--two of which are discussed in this book, one mixed-gender, and the other women-only--turned to their often obscured Mesoamerican ancestry to find new resources for building a different future for themselves and subsequent generations.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in Salinas, Healing Movements reveals how these communities have taken shape in large part through a conscious effort to uplift Chicanx-Indigenous culture and ceremonial practices. By tapping into their Indigeneity, the members of these collectives access a wealth of new resources to shape their future, opening up novel ways to organize and build strong relational ties that are noteworthy to anyone invested in abolitionist work.

Review Quotes

"Raschig's beautifully written and absolutely engaging ethnographic narrative interrogates the potentialities of the human experience in what she deems the 'broad sweep from colonialism to carcerality' on the California central coast."-- "CHOICE"

"Raschig was intimately involved as a participant with the efforts of women to fight injustice and racism in their community ... including effective protests against police violence, successful efforts to prevent plans to enlarge the facility for incarcerating young men in the community (despite dropping crime levels), and various healing practices, some of them involving Indigenous rituals and languages ... powerful stories of strong women successfully defending themselves and their community from the challenges oppression poses to America's minorities."-- "Arts Fuse"

"Can anthropology be done otherwise? In this beautifully written ethnography of struggle and hope, resistance and potentiality, Raschig shows us precisely how the otherwise becomes possible. It will change the way you think about doing anthropology."-- "Jarrett Zigon, author of How Is It Between Us? Relational Ethics and Care for the World"

"This vividly written ethnography offers nuanced interpretations of community efforts of re-membering ancestral knowledges in the midst of ongoing racialized state violence and poverty. Raschig illuminates the Chicanx/Indigenous praxis of cultural healing that re-frames quotidian struggles and nurtures women through collective sharing and joy."-- "Patricia Zavella, author of The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism"

About the Author

Megan S. Raschig is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Sacramento.