Digital Edition
Labor of love
07
Jul
Jul
Masculinity and faith intersect at a Brooklyn parish festival
The men involved in the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel find God not only in Mass and prayer, but also through manual labor, tattoos, and family ties.
Professor of religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada says that growing up in New York City she was always fascinated by street fairs. “There’s just a certain sort of magic about them,” she says. “You’re walking down the street, thinking it’s just a normal day, and all of a sudden you happen upon a saint’s procession or celebration. There are tents, special foods, special smells, and people occupying the street in a way that they don’t normally do.”
Later, as a scholar of religion, Maldonado-Estrada became interested in how these festivals are a way of expressing religious and ethnic identity and how “feasts and saints’ days are a way to reclaim neighborhoods.” She started focusing her work on one festival in particular: the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.