Our Lady of Everyday Life

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 comprehensiveanalysis 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 participantobservation in México and the United States.

An important work, sure to stimulate wide-ranging discussion, this book would be as valuable in courses on theory and method for religious studies as for courses on American religion, Mariology, Latinx religion, or religion and gender., Our Lady of Everyday Life has been very positively received by other reviewers and has won a book award from the American Sociological Association. Such recognition is well deserved: Castañeda-Liles has made an impressive contribution to the scholarship on lived religion, Mexican/Mexican-American Catholicism, feminist studies in religion, and other fields...The book is an excellent, accessible example of ethnographic writing. Therefore, it can be profitably assigned to undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of courses and appreciated by a range of scholars., This is the single most important book ever written in the sociology of religion on Mexican American women's popular devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Theoretically and methodologically sophisticated, its rich narratives and powerful stories provide remarkable insights into the spirituality and power of Latina popular Catholicism in the lives of ordinary women on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. A must read!, Anyone familiar with Latinoa religions will certainly encounter the devotion of so many to La Virgen de Guadalupe. Many other works have centered on Guadalupe herself, but few have studied the devotion among real-life women, and across generations. Castañeda-Liles has authored a very important contribution to religious studies, and to theology as well. This book is thoroughly researched, well argued, clearly written. And it will demand careful study by anyone who would study the Guadalupe devotion, Latina women, and popular religion., 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.

María Del Socorro Castañeda-Liles is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University.