Calling the soul back: embodied spirituality in Chicanx narrative
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Description
"This book shows how the Chicanx literary canon maps vital connections between mind, body, spirit, and soul"--Provided by publisher.
"Spirituality has consistently been present in the political and cultural counternarratives of Chicanx literature. Calling the Soul Back focuses on the embodied aspects of a spirituality integrating body, mind, and soul. Centering the relationship between embodiment and literary narrative, Christina Garcia Lopez shows narrative as healing work through which writers and readers ritually call back the soul--one's unique immaterial essence--into union with the body, counteracting the wounding fragmentation that emerged out of colonization and imperialism. These readings feature both underanalyzed and more popular works by pivotal writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, and Rudolfo Anaya, in addition to works by less commonly acknowledged authors. Calling the Soul Back explores the spiritual and ancestral knowledge offered in narratives of bodies in trauma, bodies engaged in ritual, grieving bodies, bodies immersed in and becoming part of nature, and dreaming bodies. Reading across narrative nonfiction, performative monologue, short fiction, fables, illustrated children's books, and a novel, Garcia Lopez asks how these narratives draw on the embodied intersections of ways of knowing and being to shift readers' consciousness regarding relationships to space, time, and natural environments. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Calling the Soul Back draws on literary and Chicanx studies scholars as well as those in religious studies, feminist studies, sociology, environmental studies, philosophy, and Indigenous studies, to reveal narrative's healing potential to bring the soul into balance with the body and mind"--Publisher's website.
ISBN
9780816537754 0816537755
Publication Date
2019
Publisher
The University of Arizona Press
City
Tucson
Keywords
spirituality, Mexican American authors, Mexican American literature, history, criticism, chicanx
Disciplines
Creative Writing | Latina/o Studies
Recommended Citation
Garcia Lopez, Christina, "Calling the soul back: embodied spirituality in Chicanx narrative" (2019). All USF Faculty Authored Books. 53.
https://repository.usfca.edu/faculty_books_all/53
