Member Clara Roman-Odio shares this announcement of her newly published book and link to video interview on it:
Sacred Iconographies shows how Chicanas look beyond local histories and confront new asymmetries produced by transnational systems in the era of globalization. Empowered by the rich traditions of their indigenous spiritualities, Chicanas expose the failures of these systems that claim to pursue the betterment of all, while actually remaining indifferent to, or possibly ignorant of, the poor of color and the poor around the globe. By centering the discussion on these spiritual traditions, sometimes elided or glossed over by scholarship, in spite of the fact that they are fundamental to Chicana literature and art, Sacred Iconographies offers an innovative feminist framework for Chicana studies—a framework that aims to develop new critical lines in cross-cultural research within the U.S. and beyond.
Interview with Clara Román-Odio
Blurbs:
“This landmark publication advances the fields of de-colonial liberation, divinity, and cultural studies. In these pages our guides are ‘anti-icons’ who stand against systems of domination, the divine mothers Tonantzin, Mary, Coatlaxopeuh, the Virgin de Guadalupe, the feminine and the matrilineal, here to teach us twenty-first-century spiritualties of dissent. Today these figures are facilitating an emerging planetary culture that functions beyond and without borders. This book’s method makes their presence visible – but only if readers are able to think in and through a de-colonizing feminism that is at once spiritual, political, global, and Chicana.†– Chela Sandoval, author of Methodology of the Oppressed
“Sacred Iconographies in Chicana Cultural Productions examines methodological and pedagogical strategies for understanding how La Virgen de Guadalupe has served and continues to serve as a venue for artistic and literary expressions of Chicana feminist ways of knowing.†– Josie Méndez-Negrete, Associate Professor, Mexican American Studies, College of Education and Human Development, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA