Twin from Another Tribe: The Story of Two Shamanic Healers from Africa and North America

by Michael Ortiz Hill and Mandaza Augustine Kandemwa

Book Overview

A gift to a world divided by race, this memoir is of two healers in the Bantu tradition-one in Africa, one in a U.S. hospital-who know themselves as spiritual twins. Merging Western medicine with shamanic practice, they offer a profound view of peacemaking that requires meeting the other as friend and teacher.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0835608522
• ISBN13: 9780835608527
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Quest Books (IL)
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Startling Glimpse at Another World

Twin of Another Tribe is a small gem of a book that manages to illustrate a remarkably complex subject in a way that is deceptively simple, making the illusory world of shamanic healing accessible without diluting the intelligence of that particular paradigm of knowing. Perhaps its greatest strength is the bridge that is created, through the interweaving stories of these two men from such different backgrounds, into an examination of the similarities and deep alliances that exist between them, and by extension, between us all. Moving and in its own way practical, I recommend it highly.

Twin Stories of Spirit and Human Truth

Twin from Another Tribe is a journey of the spirit...twin spirits to be exact, as we follow the double memoir of Augustine Kandemwa and Michael Ortiz Hill, two healers from distinctly different paths, one a black African nganga (healer), one a white American nurse and nganga, on a journey that charts independent but parallel stories through New Mexico, Los Angeles, Zimbabwe, Catholicism, Buddhism, American in the 60s, Apartheid in Africa and the complex world of dreams and ancestors. Told in alternating chapters in the give and take of campfire storytellers who speak both to us and each other, this slender book is rich with poetry and courage. Each author reveals a path from complex childhoods to political activism to the unique initiations through which healers are shaped. The stories they share are sad, hard and humorous, poignant and painful, humble and brave, sometimes shocking. It takes courage to tell stories like these, as it takes courage to be a healer, a peacemaker, to attempt to heal the world. This book is a journey of faith, a quiet teaching, and a gift to the reader who finds it in his or her hands. "The spirits have gifts," says Ortiz Hill in one of the later chapters, "and we ourselves are gifts that the ancestors want to give to the world. The only thing to do with a gift is to pass it on." So read Twin from Another Tribe. Read it again. Pass it on. The second read is as rich and worthy as the first.