Hispanic Heritage Month Reading

Some Suggested Titles from AAR's Reading Religion

Reading Religion is an openly accessible book review website published by the American Academy of Religion. The site provides up-to-date coverage of scholarly publishing in religious studies, reviewed by scholars with special interest and/or expertise in the relevant subfields. Reviews aim to be concise, comprehensive, and timely.

Below, the editors of Reading Religion have selected some books and reviews from the site and have shared some titles available to review. If you’re interested in reviewing books for Reading Religion, take a look at the guidelines. If there are any books missing from the Reading Religion site that you think should be there, email [email protected].

Reviews to Read

Circuits of the Sacred: A Faggotology in the Black Latinx Caribbean

By Carlos Ulises Decena

From the review:

“More than memoir, more than monograph, Carlos Ulises Decena’s Circuits of the Sacred: A Faggotology in the Black Latinx Caribbean boldly undresses dominant preconceptions surrounding queer spiritual and sexual identity. But this undressing does not leave us stripped and shivering in the cold light of academic discourse. Instead, Decena welcomes us into a blistering faggotology. . .” - Marion Eames White

Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment

By Christina Ramos

From the review:

“Bedlam in the New World is a welcome addition to the literature on colonial medicine in Spanish America. . . . In all, the book is concise, clearly written, and well researched.” - Alejandro Renteria

Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo

By Jennifer Koshatka Seman

From the review:

“Seman's writing style is engaging, making it a valuable resource for teaching undergraduate and graduate students. Her innovative use of archival research makes a strong case for viewing these figures as indicative of a greater historical moment.” - Jeffrey Sanchez

Christianity, Empire and the Spirit: (Re)Configuring Faith and the Cultural

By Néstor Medina

From the review:

“Medina has undoubtedly accomplished a lot in writing this book. With his de/postcolonial tools and through historical analysis, he has done a fine job deconstructing the overly simplistic concept of culture as well as unmasking the colonizing/imperialistic notion of culture that gives privileges to only “one universal culture.” - Fandy Tanujaya

A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason

By Raúl E. Zegarra

From the review:

“Zegarra’s book is . . . essential reading to evaluate the role and potential of liberation theology amidst our gloriously multi-religious and non-religious, but also increasingly polarized, public square.” - Peter Admiramd

Available for Review

Rites, Rituals and Religions: Amerindian, Spanish, Latin American and Latino Worlds

Edited by Debra D. Andrist

From the publisher:
“Philosophers have contemplated the meaning of life, the who and the why, since nascent self-consciousness of the evolving hominid species. Yet practical efforts, i.e., control of life, have always transcended the philosophical: how to dominate what happens to the physical body itself, how to control the environment, and the interaction therefrom. Thus are born rites, rituals & religions. . .   The premise behind this comparative volume is to discover how rites, rituals & religions are addressed in real life in these divergent societies by exploring the visual and literary representations of control. Rites, Rituals and Religions is the eighth and final volume in the Hispanic Worlds series.”

Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico

By Jaime M. Pensado

From the publisher:
"Love and Despair explores the multiple and mostly unknown ways progressive and conservative Catholic actors, such as priests, lay activists, journalists, intellectuals, and filmmakers, responded to the significant social and cultural shifts that formed competing notions of modernity in Cold War Mexico. Jaime M. Pensado demonstrates how the Catholic Church as a heterogeneous institution-with key transnational networks in Latin America and Western Europe-was invested in youth activism, state repression, and the counterculture from the postwar period to the more radical Sixties. Similar to their secular counterparts, progressive Catholics often saw themselves as revolutionary actors and nearly always framed their activism as an act of love. When their movements were repressed and their ideas were co-opted, marginalized, and commercialized at the end of the Sixties, the liberating hope of love often turned into a sense of despair.”

Blood in the Fields: Oscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform

By Matthew Philipp Whelan

From the publisher:
“On March 24, 1980, a sniper shot and killed Archbishop Oscar Romero as he celebrated mass. Today, nearly four decades after his death, the world continues to wrestle with the meaning of his witness.

Blood in the Fields: Oscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform treats Romero’s role in one of the central conflicts that seized El Salvador during his time as archbishop and that plunged the country into civil war immediately after his death: the conflict over the concentration of agricultural land and the exclusion of the majority from access to land to farm. Drawing extensively on historical and archival sources, Blood in the Fields examines how and why Romero advocated for justice in the distribution of land, and the cost he faced in doing so.

In contrast to his critics, who understood Romero’s calls for land reform as a communist-inspired assault on private property, Blood in the Fields shows how Romero relied upon what Catholic Social Teaching calls the common destination of created goods, drawing out its implications for what property is and what possessing it entails. For Romero, the pursuit of land reform became part of a more comprehensive politics of common use, prioritizing access of all peoples to God’s gift of creation.”

Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin

By Sergio M. González

From the publisher:
“Hospitality practices grounded in religious belief have long exercised a profound influence on Wisconsin’s Latino communities. Sergio M. González examines the power relations at work behind the types of hospitality - welcoming and otherwise - practiced on newcomers in both Milwaukee and rural areas of the Badger State. González’s analysis addresses central issues like the foundational role played by religion and sacred spaces in shaping experiences and facilitating collaboration among disparate Latino groups and across ethnic lines; the connections between sacred spaces and the moral justification for social justice movements; and the ways sacred spaces evolved into places for mitigating prejudice and social alienation, providing sanctuary from nativism and repression, and fostering local and transnational community building.

Perceptive and original, Strangers No Longer reframes the history of Latinos in Wisconsin by revealing religion’s central role in the settlement experience of immigrants, migrants, and refugees."

Predicadores: Hispanic Preaching and Immigrant Identity

By Tito Madrazo

From the publisher:
“Hispanic Protestants have been one of the most rapidly growing demographic groups in the United States over the last few decades. Sociologists have written about the cultural and political identities of this group, and theologians have reflected on theology and ethics from Hispanic Protestant perspectives, but considerably less attention has been paid to the predicadores/preachers in Hispanic Protestant congregations and the messages they proclaim on a weekly basis.

In Predicadores: Hispanic Preaching and Immigrant Identity, Tito Madrazo explores the sermons of Hispanic Protestant preachers within the context of their individual and communal journeys. Formed by overlapping experiences of migration and calling and rooted in their own bilingual and bicultural realities, the first-generation preachers who collaborated in this study interpret and proclaim Scripture in ways that refuse easy characterization. What is certain is that their preaching—which incorporates both traditional and liberative elements—resonates deeply with their immigrant congregations. Madrazo contends that the power of these preachers lies in how they consistently proclaim the characteristics of God that have been most significant to them in their own migrations.”