About the Author

Michele Elizabeth Lee has worked for over 30 years in the integrated arts field as a visual arist, curator, administrator, educator, and writer. She has a MFA from the University of Southern California and a BA from Antioch College. She is a native of Oakland, California, who was raised in a family of traditional healers from the South. She currently lives and works in her native Oakland, where she teaches art in a public school. She has two adult children, Milon and Nora.

Reviews

"A blessing for generations to come, Michele Lee's Working the Roots is the result of meticulous research and compelling storytelling. This almost-lost knowledge rekindles the passionate fire of primordial African holistic healing for an audience whose survival just may count on it."
R. Dafina Kuficha
Practicing acupuncturist, health educator, and spiritual counselor"I love this book! Working the Roots is an impressively well-written account of African American root medicine that reads like an adventure novel and is hard to put down. The book is an invaluable treasure for anthropologists, ethno-botanists, historians, herbalists, and others wanting a look inside the uncharted terrain of African American root and folk medicine."
Dr. Gail P. Myers
Cultural Anthropologist and filmmaker"Working the Roots is an example and testimony of African tradition that permeates the Americas and speaks to the widespread and in-depth knowledge African people possess about health and healing. Luck for us to now have this wealth of invaluable knowledge at our finger-tips."
Opal Palmer Adisa
Distinguished professor, poet, novelist, and photographer"This book is fundamental to the deeper understudying of a culture that usually is glossed over and commandeered or down played way too often. Working The Roots is my story as it is in many different degrees, the story of all Afro-Americans."
Opensanwo Ifakorede Fadario
Traditional health consultant, healer, visual artist, and initiated Ifa practitioner