Profane & Sacred: Latino/a American Writers Reveal the Interplay of the Secular and the Religious by Bridget Kevane (review)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: 198 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE as the benevolent alternative. By literalism, Bal means respectful and imaginative attention to the meaning, integrity, and context of words, and that is an admirable standard. But in the United States, biblical literalism is so fixed a reference to biblical dogmatism and fundamentalism, I'm not convinced that re-purposing the word as she proposes is a helpful move. Second, in reviewing Loving Yusef, I have concentrated on the story that has inspired the study, both because the story is itself a fascinating enigma and because that part of Bal'sdiscussion provides the most lucid access to her insights. Bal's erudition is daunting, as is the vocabulary that accompanies such scholarly enterprises. Every chapter presents its own internal theoretical scaffold, one that is doubtless comfortable to scholars working in narratology and semiotics. There is so much specialized language however, that a reader not comfortably conversant with these approaches could feel overwhelmed and exhausted by the intricate networks Bal invokes. I was not convinced that all this theoretical apparatus was essential in discovering the insights she presents. Perhaps she did not trust the stories enough to let them do their work. I teach the Bible as literature to undergraduate English majors. When I incorporate the insights of this book into my next iteration, I'll be sidelining much of the theory and focusing on Bal's daring encounter with the stories themselves. Ann-Ianine Morey James Madison University Profane & Sacred: Latinola American Writers Reveal the Interplay ofthe Secular and the Religious. By Bridget Kevane. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. ISBN 0-7425-4314-5 cloth, 0-7425-4315-3 paper. Pp. x + 151. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper. Bridget Kevane's book, part of the series "Celebrating Faith: Explorations in Latino Spirituality and Theology;' joins a set of recent works demonstrating that those of us interested in contemporary issues around Christianity and literature should pay attention to Latina/o Literature, especially if we are interested in how the church is being critiqued. These recent studies include Hector Avalos' Strangers in Our Own Land: Religion in Contemporary U. S. Latinalo Literature (2006), which compares the ways the major religious systems have been depicted, and B. Marie Christian's Beliefin Dialogue: U. S. Latina Writers Confront Their Religiou