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Our Lady of Everyday Life examines the lived religion, from childhood to adulthood, of three generations of Mexican-origin Catholic women. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the Catholic beliefs that the women in this study inherited from their mothers, and the ways these beliefs become the religious/cultural template from which they first learn to see themselves as people of faith.
Our Lady of Everyday Life also offers a comprehensive analysis of the ways Catholic culture sets the parameters within which Mexican-origin women learn how to be
good girls in a manner that reduces a girl's agency to rubble. Castañeda-Liles demonstrates how women develop a type of Mexican Catholic imagination that moves them to challenge and reject the sanctification of shame, guilt, and
aguante (endurance at all cost). This imagination allows these women to transgress limiting notions of what a good Catholic woman should be while retaining the aspects of Catholicism they find life-givingwhile still identifying as Catholics. This transgression is most visible in their relationship to La Virgen de Guadalupe, which is not fixed but fluid and deeply engaged in their process of self-awareness in everyday life.
Our Lady of Everyday Life applies an intersectional analysis that centers religion along with race, class, gender, and sexuality to the study of women. This ethnography provides an in-depth cross-sectional analysis of three generations of Mexican-origin women between the ages of 18 and 82 (single and in college, mothers and older women). It is a multi-method study, including structured and unstructured interviews, focus groups, photographic and video documentation, and participant observation in México and the United States.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: "Here It Is Told"
- Chapter 2: Our Lady of Café con Leche: The Social Construction of Catholic Devotion
- Chapter 3: Catholicizing Girlhood: Socializing Girls into Institutional Catholicism
- Chapter 4: The Making of Girls in the Mexican Catholic Imagination: Obedience, Respect, and Responsibility
- Chapter 5: Becoming Señoritas: If You Can't Talk About in Church, You Can't Talk About It Anywhere
- Chapter 6: Our Lady of Everyday Life
- Chapter 7: Perceptions of Our Lady of Guadalupe's Relationship to Feminism: "The Time is Now"
- Chapter 8: Why do they paint her this way? She is our mother
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
About the author
María Del Socorro Castañeda-Liles is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University.
Summary
Our Lady of Everyday Life is an ethnographic study of three generations of Mexican origin women (college students, mothers, and older women) and their experiences growing up Catholic. The book focuses on their relationship with Our Lady of Guadalupe as central to what Castañeda-Liles calls their "Mexican Catholic imagination."
Additional text
Through intimate portraits of women across three generations, María Del Socorro Castañeda-Liles depicts what it means to see family, community, and the sacred through a Mexican Catholic Imagination. Our Lady of Everyday Life powerfully demonstrates how religion works alongside race, class, gender, and sexuality to shape Chicana/Latina women's subjectivity.
