Title: Religion at the corner of bliss and nirvana : politics, identity, and faith in new migrant communities /
Authors: Lorentzen, Lois Ann, 1952-
Publisher: Duke University Press,
Year: 2009
Subjects: Religious pluralism United States.; Immigrants Religious life California San Francisco Bay Area.; Gays Religious life United States.; Religion and culture United States
Abstract: Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana illuminates the role that religion plays in the civic and political experiences of new migrants in the UNited States. By bringing innovative questions and theoretical frameworks to bear on the experiences of Chinese, Filipino, Mexican, Salvadoran, and Vietnamese migrants, scholars and activists demonstrate how groups and individuals negotiate multiple religious, cultural, and national identities, and how religious faiths are transformed through migration. They show how the religious lives of migrants reflect a process of adaptation to new physical and cultural environments as well as an ongoing synthesis of cultural elements from their countries of origin and the United States. As they conducted ethnographic research, the contributors visited not only churches and temples but also single-room-occupancy hotels, brothels, tattoo-removal clinics, and the streets of San Francisco, El Salvador, Mexico, and Vietnam. Their essays include an exploration of how faith-based organizations can help LGBT migrants surmount legal and social complexities, an examination of transgendered sex workers' relationship with the unofficial saint Santisima Muerte, a comparison of how a Presbyterian mission and a Buddhist temple in San Francisco help Chinese immigrants to acculturate, and an analysis of the transformation of baptismal rites performed by Mayan migrants. (Back cover).
Contents: Devotional crossings : transgender sex workers, Santisima Muerte, and spiritual solidarity in Guadalajara and San Francisco / Cymene Howe, Susanna Zaraysky, and Lois Ann Lorentzen -- Sexual borderlands : lesbian and gay migration, human rights, and the Metropolitan Community Church / Cymene Howe -- El milagro está en casa : gender and private and public empowerment in a migrant Pentecostal church / Lois Ann Lorentzen with Rosalina Mira -- Religious organizations in San Francisco Chinatown : sites of acculturation for Chinese immigrant youth / Kevin M. Chun -- Immigrant religious adaptation : Vietnamese American Buddhists at Chua Viet Nam (Vietnamese Buddhist temple) / Hien Duc Do and Mimi Khúc -- Americanizing Philippine churches and Filipinizing American congregations / Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III -- Creating a transnational religious community : the Empress of Heaven and Goddess of The Sea, Tianhou/Mazu, from Beigang to San Francisco / Jonathan H.X. Lee -- Ahora la luz : transnational gangs, the state, and religion / Lois Ann Lorentzen with Luis Enrique Bazan -- Transnational Hetzmek : from Oxkutzcab to San Francisco / Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola -- The Latino "springtime" of the Catholic Church : lay religious networks and transnationalism from below / Sarah Horton -- We do not bowl alone : cultural and social capital from Filipino faiths / Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III, Andrea Maison, and Dennis Marzan -- Counterhegemony finds place in a hegemon : activism through Filipino American churches / Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III and Claudine del Rosario.