This article discusses the life experiences of an afro-descendent medicine man, based on fragments of his early biography, hand written by himself and named “Entry into a life of suffering and bitterness”. Returning to the anthropological tradition on the study of narratives, and aiming to apply an ethnocritical approach to the reading of the narrative, we have interpreted his discourse in order to understand a) his narrative strategy, b) the technique of text construction and c) the contextual meanings of his discourse, elaborated to reinforce his condition of being a sufferer, and that constitutes the recurring element, out of which he formulates his explanation for his “fate” of healing other peoples suffering and pain.
ethnocritical approach; medicine; the life experiences; the study of narratives