The Land in Our Bones

A profound and searching exploration of the herbs and land-based medicines of Lebanon and Cana’an--a vital invitation to re-member our roots and deepen relationship with the lands where we live in diaspora Tying cultural survival to earth-based knowledge, Lebanese ethnobotanist, sovereignty steward, and cultural worker Layla K. Feghali offers a layered history of the healing plants of Cana’an (the Levant) and the Crossroads (“Middle East”) and asks into the ways we become free from the wounds of colonization and displacement. Feghali remaps Cana’an and its crossroads, exploring the complexities, systemic impacts, and yearnings of diaspora. She shows how ancestral healing practices connect land and kin--calling back and forth across geographies and generations and providing an embodied lifeline for regenerative healing and repair. Anchored in a praxis she calls Plantcestral Re-Membrance, Feghali asks how we find our way home amid displacement: How do we embody what binds us together while holding the ways we’ve been wrested apart? What does it mean to be of a place when extraction and empire destroy its geographies? What can we restore when we reach beyond what’sbeen lost and tend to what remains? How do we cultivate kinship with the lands where we live, especially when migration has led us to other colonized territories? Recounting vivid stories of people and places across Cana’an, Feghali shares lineages of folk healing and eco-cultural stewardship: those passed down by matriarchs; plants and practices of prenatal and postpartum care; mystical traditions for spiritual healing; earth-based practices for emotional wellness; plant tending for bioregional regeneration; medicinal plants and herbal protocols; cultural remedies and recipes; and more. <The Land in Our Bones< asks us to reclaim the integrity of our worlds, interrogating colonization and defying its “cultures of severance” through the guidance of land, lineage, and love. It is an urgent companion for our times, a beckoning call towards belonging, healing, and freedom through tending the land in your own bones....

Auteur

Layla Feghali

Texte du rabat

A profound and searching exploration of the herbs, foodways, and land-based medicines of Lebanon and Canaan—a deep invitation to remember and reconnect to our roots amid displacement and in diaspora.

Herbalist and author Layla Feghali shares a nuanced and layered cultural history of the healing plants of Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) and Canaan, exploring how they connect family and kin in diaspora—and call across generations of ancestral knowledge.

Tying cultural survival to land-based knowledge and the plants, herbs, geography, medicines, and foodways that shape and sustain us, Feghali re-maps Canaan and its crossroads, explores the complexities and yearnings of diaspora, and explains the wounds of colonization.

Feghali asks how we find our way home amid displacement: How do we embody the lands and the histories that bind us together, while holding the ways we’ve been wrested apart? What does it mean to be of a place, when extraction and empire destroy its geographies? How do we reconnect to interrupted ways of knowing—the seeing, being, connecting, and healing we feel in our bones? What do we rediscover when we look beyond what’s been lost and tend to what remains?

She shares lineages of folk healing in Canaan: those passed down by mothers and grandmothers; plants and practices used in prenatal and postpartum care; mystical traditions for spiritual healing; earth-based practices for emotional wellness; cultural foods and medicinal plants; and more.

Including recipes, family stories, and a glossary of meaningful terms, The Land in Our Bones asks us to reflect on belonging and lineage—to reclaim our cultural stories, to participate in them with reciprocity and care—and deepens our connection to the lands, people, and places we call home.