Theologizing en Espanglish: Context, Community, and Ministry (review)

With great poignancy Cármen Nanko-Fernández raises important challenges for the U.S. Latin@ and the broader theological community. Nanko-Fernandez has adopted the use of Latin@ as a cipher to describe the complex identity issues faced by the U.S. Latina/o communities. Latin@ functions as the self-adopted unutterable identity label that acknowledges the irreducible contested spaces of gender, ethnoculture, and history in the experience of these communities.The book is refreshing and up to date and deals with relevant contemporary issues that the Church is confronting in the United States. The author shows her versatility and literary breadth as she weaves the pages of her book with unique sources from numerous other fields: literature and popular culture stand out in this smorgasbord of resources. She invites contemporary theologians to come out of the closet and enter the trenches of the Latin@ communities in issues such as migration, (dis)ability, hospitality, and even béisbol (baseball). Her invitation is particularly important, as Latin@s are the fastest growing sectors of U.S. Catholicism. She articulates her remarks, insights, and challenges with her unique wit and humour, while touching on the serious issues: the playfulness with words such as Unaited Estaites, and Othercide humorously transgress the discursive boundaries, thus creating new epistemological spaces.

This collection of previously published papers exudes relevance, showing evidence of substantial changes from the original publications. While there is no explicit unifying theme, all the articles demonstrate Nanko-Fernández’s commitment to the struggle for justice, keeping in mind the most vulnerable groups of her own community. She deals with language, identity, popular culture, and preferential option for the poor in the United States, always providing a sobering perspective on each of those major issues for Latin@s. In line with Latin American Liberation theology, the preferential option for the poor points to a specific commitment for the disenfranchised and marginalized groups of society because of economic, gender, and ethnocultural prejudice.

From the perspective of a pastoral theologian, she demonstrates that pastoral theology and ministry have much to contribute to complex theological engagement, for this branch of theology remains close to people’s lives and experience. Nanko-Fernández presents a perspective for the foundations of a theological anthropology.

As expected, part of her commitment finds its source in her very own experience of migration—a reality she uses as a platform for understanding contemporary issues. Her approach is unique, as she shows the importance for scholars to recognize the degree to which their own experience affects their theological reflections. No less important are the numerous articles, books, novels, life experiences, and accounts she draws on to articulate her concerns for her community. I find refreshing the ways in which she navigates and preserves the fine tensions and ambiguities of an inbetween-espanglish existence, whereby the linguistic nuances are heightened by the irreverent interplay of English and Spanish, and everything in between.

In her articulation she revisits important theological markers for Latin@ theologies since their inception. She crafts her book making reference to these themes that have had such tremendous impact among Latin@s in the United States. This is, however, the weakest aspect of her book, as it becomes acutely evident that there is need for Latin@ theologians to give more critical theoretical substance to those terms and what they symbolize: popular religion, culture, mestizaje-hibridity, lo cotidiano, and preferential option for the poor. In my view, because we make substantial use of these categories, we need to invest much work in redefining them. At the same time, she shows the need for Latin@ theology to reinvent itself, addressing key issues affecting Latin@s in the United States and people all over the world: migration, globalization, transnationalism, cyber culture, capitalism, and consumption. To these, environmental racism must be added. How these can be reflected upon from inside the belly of the beast (José Martí) by those in...