“Mestizaje, Spirituality, and Feminist Redress in Ana Castillo’s So Far From God (1993)”
Ana Castillo’s So Far From God (1993) is a novel about a family of five Chicana women living in Tome, New Mexico—where the comic exists alongside the horrific, and the supernatural exists alongside the everyday. A classic within Chicana literature, Castillo’s work overflows with the presence of mestiza spirituality and hybrid religious forms. A blend of Latin American Catholicism, indigenous religion, and contemporary American religion makes itself known in the lives of the characters, not only in the structure of their daily lives, but also in sudden, miraculous ways. This colloquium will focus on the book’s first chapter, discussing the ways in which these hybrid religious formations are linked with practices of resistance, mourning, and redress. For despite the deadly challenges faced by the characters living in the Mexican American borderlands, the novel is, at the same time, one of creativity and life.
The discussion will be facilitated by Sebastián Andrés Grandas, MAR Candidate in Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School, and translator of LatinX literature.
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