num_pages: 232
description: 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 soulones unique immaterial essenceinto 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 Anzalda 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 childrens 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 narratives healing potential to bring the soul into balance with the body and mind.
language: English
title: Calling the Soul Back: Embodied Spirituality in Chicanx Narrative
publisher: University of Arizona Press