When Corn Husks Stir Soul Memories…
One night I was reading a historic novel for young adults. When I reached a specific excerpt, I started crying rivers. Today I know that those tears came from memories that only my soul had access to. This is why I thought that the M with which the word doll starts in Spanish perfectly mirrors the M that also starts the word Memory, hence this title Muñecas de la Memoria, Memory Dolls.
The shero of that book, born somewhere in “the Wild West”, had been taken East to get a… Western education. Her father was white, her (deceased) mother was Native, which made her a so-called Half Breed. The author imagined how, far away from her roots, the young girl had to learn how to live amongst strangers supposed to be relatives. Those people were not accustomed to her skin color nor her “wild manners”, and the young girl felt so lonely that her only companion was a corn husk doll made by her father. That object was the only thing she could hold on to, like a taste of home when her Pa would be away.
So she patiently waited for her father’s return, while speaking to her doll… and letting the doll speak to her. Using what psychologists may call “transference“, the novelist had established that the basic doll had become the shero’s ‘Ma Doll.‘ The corn husk creature had started speaking from the Spirit realm in the voice of the little girl’s deceased mother. The doll had no face (a prerequisite if you honor the Haudenosaunee (Oneida) ways, because the absence of defined traits reminds people of never being vain) but she sure had found a unique voice. The doll didn’t even have a patch of corn silk for hair; only strings tied around the husks to make its neck and waist. But she was more than enough for the shero…
Through my tears I vowed to make a doll of said shero… carrying her Ma Doll, through some sort of Russian doll urge. Mine (both of them) had woolen hair. The ‘live’ one had fabric scrap clothing and a few accessories that symbolically spoke to me and honored the circumstances of her mom’s origins. She carried wood to fuel an imaginary hearth to always stay warm in the heart, even when she felt the whole world had abandoned her.
That first corn husk doll would soon be accompanied by many other characters that started crowding the plentiful realm of my imaginary world. Many of those corn creatures were inspired by the same Wild West my very first corn husk doll belonged to and longed for.
This carousel above shows some of those themed creations: a Navajo weaver at her loom, transforming her sheep’s wool into a rug; a curandera (folk healer) well versed in medicinal plants; a Pueblo woman named Paf Sheuri (Blue Flower in Tewa) meeting Sor María de Ágreda, the Spanish nun who bilocated to New Mexico in the 17th century; a Balloonist eagerly awaiting Albuquerque’s Balloon Fiesta; a folk healer and a Wild Wester; a Soiled Dove; a Spanish Señorita celebrating her quinceañera.
My corn husk versions of Paf Sheuri and María de Ágreda were given to Anna Nogar and Amy Córdova Boone, the two ladies who participated in the creation of another children’s book that had inspired my creation: Sisters in Blue, Hermanas de Azul. I liked how the authors had chosen the well-documented bilocations of that real-life woman as the ‘supernatural’ backdrop for the complex retelling of a very difficult although seeminlgy fated encounter between worlds with opposing views. I loved the authors’ choice, as an attempt to reconcile said oppositions within their history and blood, through storytelling therapy…
Another real-life person who inspired my dolls was the late New Mexican curandera Elena Ávila, whose corn husk self carries a sahumador (clay vessel used for burning aromatic resins, herbs, and copal to cleanse spaces, perform rituals, or provide aromatherapy). I fell in love with her universe upon reading Woman Who Glows in the Dark, hence my move to represent her in corn husk clothing. But the true magic happened when my neighbor came to my house, glanced at the doll, covered her mouth with her hand and let tears run down her cheeks. She had instantly recognized the curandera who had assisted her so many times in the past. What happened that day showed me how said dolls hold magic, true healing powers. Curanderas would also often encourage their patients to create self dolls, made of corn or other material, to reCORNect with the inner child.
Later down my doll-making endeavor, I hosted a corn husk doll workshop: Sacred Corn Art, at other folk healers’ home. Bernadette Torres and her partner Mino work in a beautiful tandem. They harmoniously joined their respective healing practices through the use of the wonderful properties of Northern New Mexico herbs and Peruvian tobacco, Sheri. I had organized the workshop in two parts: an introduction of the deeper meaning behind creating dolls that can serve one’s soul work and the actual doll making process. The doll I created that day was a curandera again, one very dear to many New Mexicans. She was born from the vision of the late New Mexican writer Rudolfo Anaya. Her name is Última, and she is a literary ‘superstar’ among the first characters to give a voice and face to Nuevo Mexicanos’ traditional way of life. Of course, my version of Última became a gift for her literary creator too…
Rudy loved the ‘accessories’: real herbs the doll had gathered in the open plains of Eastern New Mexico, and the corn husk owl on her shoulder.
In his first novel Bless Me, Última, Rudy had made a point of making it very clear that both the bird and the healer were one and the same. Through her spirit animal, the owl, Última literally breathed and worked her healing magic. The death of one would mean the demise of the other. However, both aspects of that curandera soul had enough time to instill in their young apprentice, Antonio, the secrets of the soul. Rudy was gracious enough to lend me part of his Antonio’s path to show me the way to my own self healing. That, in term, would slowly enable me to help others to heal too, through regression hypnosis and spirit release therapy, two modalities that dig for memories of other times to find the root cause of some dis-ease. Muñecas aka dolls will tell you that all it takes is a bit of heart magic!
