A New York City ethnography that explores men's unique approaches to Catholic devotion
Every Saturday, and sometimes on weekday evenings, a group of men in old clothes can be found in the basement of the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Each year the parish hosts the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. Its crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, where the men lift a seventy-foot tall, four-ton tower through the streets, bearing its weight on their shoulders.
Drawing on six years of research, Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada reveals the making of this Italian American tower, as the men work year-round to prepare for the Feast. She argues that by paying attention to this behind-the-scenes activity, largely overlooked devotional practices shed new light on how men embody and enact their religiosity in sometimes unexpected ways.
Lifeblood of the Parish evocatively and accessibly presents the sensory and material world of Catholicism in Brooklyn, where religion is raucous and playful. Maldonado-Estrada here offers a new lens through which to understand men’s religious practice, showing how men and boys become socialized into their tradition and express devotion through unexpected acts like painting, woodworking, fundraising, and sporting tattoos. These practices, though not usually considered religious, are central to the ways the men she studied embodied their Catholic identity and formed bonds to the church.

"Offers readers a look into a complicated history between various cultures and communities, one collectively built up over decades and, quite literally, on the shoulders of men. Maldonado-Estrada complicates what masculinity looks like in the Catholic Church, marking it as a process that occurs over years of piety, devotion, but above all work." - National Catholic Reporter

"Chapter-by-chapter the author’s descriptive language makes readers feel as though they are at the places under study, observing the conspicuous aspects of religion and newly considering the places where religion may be found…By the end of the book, readers should be convinced that religion is not merely found but is actually collectively forged in such spaces and represented on inked bodies and in the conviction with which collective stories of the neighborhood are told." - American Religion

"Lifeblood of the Parish turns on its head our understanding of Catholic devotionalism among Italian Americans and among Catholics in the United States more generally…It is difficult to imagine a list of must-read books about Italian American Catholics that does not include Lifeblood of the Parish." - Italian American Review