4: Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada: Lifeblood of the Parish

A conversation with Dr. Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada of Kalamazoo College about her book Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (New York: NYU Press, 2020).  We discussed her experiences over six years of ethnographic work engaging the parish community; reading tattoos as devotional texts; playfulness and devotion in masculine spaces; the rich history of Italian-American Catholicism in Williamsburg; the the financial realities of community devotion; and the endurance of this parish, tradition, and community--despite decades of challenges ranging from reactionary clergymen to Robert Moses to gentrifying hipsters.

More information:

https://alyssamaldonadoestrada.com/

https://nyupress.org/9781479830497/lifeblood-of-the-parish/