Profane Sacred: Latino/a American Writers Reveal the Interplay of the Secu [Paperback]

Profane & Sacred examines religious discourse in contemporary Latino/a fiction, exploring how religion creates, mediates or changes Latino culture and identity. Much contemporary literary criticism on Latino/a literature has focused on the bilingual and bicultural nature of Latino identity, history and cultural production. But just as the multiplicity of cultures and languages has shaped Latino identity and history, so too has religion. Studying the religious discourse found in fiction can clearly enrich not only our perception of the diversity within the Hispanic communities, but also the diversity between sociologists and creative writers.Bridget Kevane is associate professor of modern languages and literatures at Montana State University. She is the author of Latino Literature in America.

This original contribution to the field of Latino/a literature, focuses on the representation of religion and its practices. Kevane gives a compelling account of the alternatives to Christian faith offered by Latino/a writers who believe that something is broken in the religious practice of Hispanic culture. With this book, Kevane also challenges the rigid categories often used to describe the faith and religious practice of Latino/as, and she enriches our thinking about the new and alternative stories these writers tell about religious experience. Benigno Trigo, director of Graduate Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Vanderbilt University

Given that most Latinos believe in God, most are first-generation immigrants, and at least one in four Latinos are poor, how can faith-which is frequently politically escapist-adequately confront oppression? Bridget Kevane explores how recent Latino/anovels provide extended reflections on this problem of the politics of faith, exposing both the incompatibilities of religious practices and social justice and also devising new forms of politically-interventionist faith. Profane & Sacred is an important contribution to anlC©