Religious Hybridity: A Source of Cultural, Political and Social Resistance in So Far from God by Ana Castillo

Thesis Statement:2

Introduction2

Discussion3

Religious Hybridity- In View of Different Theories4

Development of Hybrid Cultures7

Conclusion8

Works Cited10

Religious Hybridity: A Source of Cultural, Political and Social Resistance in So Far from God by Ana Castillo

Thesis Statement: The practice of hybrid religious rituals put forward political and social features suffered by the oppressed groups. Space is both materially and metaphorically present in the expressions of religiosity and social justice for the oppressed groups. Though the depicted resistance in So Far From God by Ana Castillo start in the home's private space, the public sphere or the community is the main location of their manifestation. Religious hybridity, in So Far From God, is linked up to a strongly supported and community-based resistance.

Introduction

In novel So Far From God, Ana Castillo describes how through the voices of four Chicano women Castillo presents ''women as agents of social change,'' challenging cultural, political, and religious forms of oppression. By presenting a cast of female characters resisting command and control day by day in their live, although having some time more successful in comparison to others, So Far from God by Ana Castillo offsets a pervasive stereotype of Chicanas as passive individuals subordinated by a patriarchal church or victimized by oppression. From a persistent battle against subjugation, the wakenings that these characters go through emerge wherein the tactics and terms of their struggle are shifted by them as circumstances permit.

In this paper, a brief depiction of the way is meant to offer wherein the practice of hybrid religious rituals propose social and political features underwent by the oppressed groups.

Discussion

Typically, in the post and neo colonial contexts, religion and religious practices of subordinated groups are mainly discussed taking their roles into consideration in the victimization and oppression of the postcolonial subjects. While as a tool of oppression, state-sanctioned religion might have been perceived, the centrality of religious hybridity might be overlooked by such an approach in the lives of characters and its significant part as a political, cultural, and social resistance's source. Though not essentially always or even opposed openly to the colonial project, So Far from God by Ana Castillo offers an example wherein the characters give an explanation for the colonial past and neo-colonial present via the hybridity of religious practices and rituals.

In the context of Far from God by Ana Castillo, the term religious hybridity is used to denote the specific Roman Catholicism type and the use that Chicano characters made of it in their portrayed routine experience. For these characters, religious hybridity comprises traditional Catholic ceremonies, rituals, and practices, overlapped with a complex mix of various types of religious-based knowledge that are essentially part of the folkloric and indigenous ones. It is not easy to quantify the depicted religious hybridity in to a mix of fifty percent indigenous tradition and fifty percent Catholic, for instance. Instead, there is a variation in its emphasis and insertion of all of the religious knowledge's iconography, ...