ABOUT THIS BOOK

In Circuits of the Sacred Carlos Ulises Decena examines transnational black Latinx Caribbean immigrant queer life and spirit. Decena models what he calls a faggotology—the erotic in the divine as found in the disreputable and the excessive—as foundational to queer black critical and expressive praxis of the future. Drawing on theoretical analysis, memoir, creative writing, and ethnography of Santería/Lucumí in Santo Domingo, Havana, and New Jersey, Decena moves between languages, locations, pronouns, and genres to map the itineraries of blackness as a “circuit,” a multipronged and multisensorial field. A feminist pilgrimage and extended conversation with the dead, Decena’s study is a provocative work that transforms the academic monograph into a gathering of stories, theoretical innovation, and expressive praxis to channel voices, ancestors, deities, theorists, artists, and spirits from the vantage point of radical feminism and queer-of-color thinking.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Carlos Ulises Decena is Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University and author of Tacit Subjects: Belonging and Same-Sex Desire among Dominican Immigrant Men, also published by Duke University Press.

REVIEWS

"Beyond the provocation of the book’s title and theoretical framework lies, in moments, a charming memoir chronicling Decena’s auto-ethnographic experience of growing up in a Black Dominican migrant family. . . . Decena’s generational musings on queer life will be of particular interest to readers who value sex-positive ethics regarding HIV awareness and prevention."
-- James Padilioni American Religion

"More than memoir, more than monograph, Carlos Ulises Decena’s Circuits of the Sacred boldly undresses dominant preconceptions surrounding queer spiritual and sexual identity. . . . Decena’s unapologetic command of space and attention makes this book a valuable contribution to queer scholarship. The text’s emotional complexity constructs kinetic reckoning and revolution, calling us to (re)shape livable futures."
-- Marion Eames White Reading Religion

TABLE OF CONTENTS

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.