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 regen‐ erative 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’s been 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.

FOR SWANA DIASPORA READERS looking to reconnect with their roots, ancestral wisdom, and cultural practices.
FOR HERBALISTS AND PLANT-BASED HEALERS looking for a deep and comprehensive survey of Earth‐based medicines.

COMPREHENSIVE HEALING PRACTICES: For the individual and the collective tending wounds of colonialism and empire. Covers herbs, plants, medici‐ nal foods, mystical healing practices, ancestral connections, relating to many homes, and more.

POETIC AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN: Feghali’s writing style wraps you up and transports you. It’s an evocative, sensorial experience.
THIRD CULTURE EXPERIENCE: Speaks directly to readers straddling the cultures, practices, and traditions of their ancestors and those of their current homes.
SPEAKS TO GRIEF and honors the complex and nuanced loss that comes with displacement and diaspora. PLANT-BASED KNOWLEDGE that will be enriching and valuable to any herbalism reader.