| Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and Mexican Culture Subjects: American literature -- Mexican American authors -- History and criticism; Mexican American literature (Spanish) -- History and criticism; Mexican-American Border Region -- Civilization; Mexican literature -- History and criticism; Secularism in literature; Winner of the 2014 Latina/o Studies Section - LASA Outstanding Book Award Popular spirituality of this kind engages the use and exchange of relics, faith healing, pilgrimages, and spirit possession, exemplifying the contradictions between high and popular culture, human and divine, and secular and sacred. Martín focuses upon a wide range of Mexican and Chicano/a cultural works drawn from the nineteenth century to the present, covering such diverse genres as the novel, the communiqué, drama, the essay or crónica, film, and contemporary digital media. She argues that spiritual practice is often represented as narrative, while narrative--whether literary, historical, visual, or oral--may modify or even function as devotional practice. DESIRÉE A. MARTÍN is an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Davis. |