Constructing Lives in the 1.5 Generation: Religious Identity and Spirituality of College-age Latina Emerging Adults

• In Event: Popular Religion and Emerging Meanings: The Caribbean and South Florida

Abstract

Young adult Latinas who came to the United States as children or were born of Latino immigrant families draw on many sources to construct their identity. One such source is their religious understanding and experience, which for most Catholic Latinas at some level includes religious practices, attitudes and devotions towards God that are learned and built at home. There is both a receiving and giving, a mutuality, since they both receive these traditions and give new shape to them as they move forward in their context. By listening to their lived experiences and religious practices as self-identified Catholics, this study examines religious identity of Latinas in their 20s in South Florida, making sense of the faith that has been passed and contributing to an emerging to the construction of Latina spirituality.

Author

• Claudia H Herrera, St Thomas University