The Women Who Threw Corn (Martin Austin Nesvig)

This book tells the stories of women from Spain, North Africa, Senegambia, and Canaries accused of sorcery in sixteenth-century Mexico for adapting native magic and healing practices. These non-native women - the mulata of Seville who cured the evil eye; the Canarian daughter of a Count who ate peyote and mixed her bath water into a man's mustard supply; the wife of a Spanish conquistador who let her hair loose and chanted to a Mesoamerican god while sweeping at midnight; the wealthy Basque woman with a tattoo of a red devil; and many others - routinely adapted Native ritual into hybrid magic and cosmology. Through a radical rethinking of colonial knowledge, Martin Austin Nesvig uncovers a world previously left in the shadows of historical writing, revealing a fascinating and vibrant multi-ethnic community of witches, midwives, and healers.

Martin Austin Nesvig is Professor of History at the University of Miami, and a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He is the author of five books including Ideology and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early Mexico (2009) and Promiscuous Power: An Unorthodox History of New Spain (2018).

Buch (Hardcover), Englisch, 320 Seiten