Undocumented Saints follows the migration of popular saints from Mexico into the US and the evolution of their meaning. The book explores how Latinx battles for survival are performed in the worlds of faith, religiosity, and the imaginary, and how the socio-political realities of exploitation and racial segregation frame their popular religious expressions. It also tracks the emergence of inter-religious states, transnational ethnic and cultural enclaves unified by faith. The book looks at five vernacular saints that have emerged in Mexico and whose devotions have migrated into the US in the last one hundred years: Jesús Malverde, a popular bandido turned saint caudillo; Santa Olguita, an emerging feminist saint linked to border women's experiences of sexual violence; Juan Soldado, a murder-rapist soldier who is now a patron for undocumented immigrants and the main suspect in the death of an eight-year-old victim known now as Santa Olguita; Toribio Romo, a Catholic priest whose ghost/spirit has been helping people cross the border into the US since the 1990s; and La Santa Muerte, a controversial personification of death who is particularly popular among LGBTQ migrants. Each chapter contextualizes a particular popular saint within broader discourses about the construction of masculinity and the state, the long history of violence against Latina and migrant women, female erasure from history, discrimination against non-normative sexualities, and as US and Mexican investment in the control of religiosity within the discourses of immigration.

What we know of Martha Wood's spiritual quest we know only from images composed in her mind's eye and recovered from her camera after her sudden death in the Andean highlands of Peru--images that she never saw on film. Wood had traveled to Peru with her husband, Andy Johnson, and a group of friends. Pursuing separate journeys, they were to meet at the fabled Inca city of Machu Picchu. But fate intervened, and Wood passed away silently in the quiet hours of night. Examples of contemporary Mexican amate paper, reminiscent of the "spiritual passports" the Aztec placed on their dead, complement Wood's photographs throughout this tribute to an artist who never lived to see her finest work.

Inspirational and educational book, dedicated to every child in the world, including the one inside each of us. Great family read. It will inspire children, young adults and adults alike to experience life from a different perspective. Through the eyes and voices of two children, Lara and Tian, the reader is taken on a round the world journey to the past in search of answers to some of our deepest concerns. In the straightforward manner that only children are capable of, Lara and Tian unveil the answers that we adults fail to see simply because our minds and hearts have lost the ability to see. This is a trip of discovery, an opportunity to appeal to the inner child inside each of us and to remove the crust that keeps us blindfolded. The truth is so simple that it seems magical. It will nourish your soul as it awakens your heart to the wisdom inside.

The Real Meaning of the F-Word unveils a guided process that will teach you how Forgiveness can bring about spiritual, psychological and physical healing. Through thought provoking questions, engaging real life stories, and the "3Fs Process," you will discover your own path to a new life of true freedom. The teachings in this book will steer you through despair, hurt and resentment, to Acceptance and Peace. Social activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Desmond Tutu, wrote a book titled: No Future without Forgiveness. The people whose stories are included in The Real Meaning of the F-Word-a victim of a gang rape who kept this assault secret for over fifty years, a convicted murderer sentenced to life in prison, a holocaust survivor, and many others who experienced hurt, betrayal, and physical challenges-have all proven to be living testaments to the truth of Desmond Tutu's assertion. In order to find the heart to forgive, these people had to marshal the courage to face their hurt, fear, frustration and anger, and the strength to release the judgments that were causing their suffering. The 3Fs Process provided the framework for their journey to freedom. It can do the same for you. Clara Naum invites you to take this opportunity to heal yourself and future generations by learning the benefits of Forgiveness. This book will take you from Darkness to Light - from "F**k it!" to "Freedom"-by inspiring you to choose Forgiveness as a tool for your own transformation.

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) was a extraordinary Spanish thinker, a philosopher, linguist, poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, professor, university administrator, and Spanish public intellectual. He had great intellectual integrity and moral courage. Unamuno is not an easy philosopher to read. He loved paradoxes and even (at times) contradictions. Various interpreters have called him an atheist, a sceptic, a Protestant, a pantheist, a Catholic modernist, and a good Catholic. Passages can be found in his writings that can be taken to support all of these interpretations. In the present book, Jan E. Evans does an incisive and thorough job of sorting through the Unamuno corpus and arriving at a definitive interpretation of his views.One great asset of Evans' work is the insight she gains by comparing Unamuno's works with the philosophers whom he admired most and considered his fellow travellers in the tragic sense of life. These include Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), William James (1842-1910), and especially Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This book examines the life and work of Unamuno through the lens of his faith. Those who are not familiar with Unamuno will find here a clear exposition of the most important themes in the thinker's work along with a framework through which one can profitably begin to read his primary texts.

Placing the prostitute at the center of reading, Fictions of Bad Life moves between text and meta-text, exploring how to rescue the prostitute from her imprisonment and turn her into the subject of history.

Set against the cultural and political backdrop of interwar Europe and the Americas, Poetry in Pieces is the first major study of the Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892–1938) to appear in English in more than thirty years. Vallejo lived and wrote in two distinct settings—Peru and Paris—which were continually crisscrossed by new developments in aesthetics, politics, and practices of everyday life; his poetry and prose therefore need to be read in connection with modernity in all its forms and spaces. Michelle Clayton combines close readings of Vallejo’s writings with cultural, historical, and theoretical analysis, connecting Vallejo—and Latin American poetry—to the broader panorama of international modernism and the avant-garde, and to writers and artists such as Rainer Maria Rilke, James Joyce, Georges Bataille, and Charlie Chaplin. Poetry in Pieces sheds new light on one of the key figures in twentieth-century Latin American literature, while exploring ways of rethinking the parameters of international lyric modernity.

"A transnational approach to the history of a key Latin American border region"--Provided by publisher.

In the 1930s, Américo Paredes, the renowned folklorist, wrote a novel set to the background of the struggles of Texas Mexicans to preserve their property, culture and identity in the face of Anglo-American migration to and growing dominance over the Rio Grande Valley. Episodes of guerilla warfare, land grabs, racism, jingoism, and abuses by the Texas Rangers make this an adventure novel as well as one of reflection on the making of modern day Texas. George Washington GÑmez is a true precursor of the modern Chicano novel.