ABSTRACT
This Catholic “education” was supplemented by the comedic religious outbursts of my Cuban grandmother and later, for me, the diverse canon of Catholic-inspired art centered on the male torso. My mother dutifully kept a bedroom altar of African herbs and beads, Spanish tarot cards, family photographs and glass-encased candles mixed with wrinkled images of angels and saints, such as Las Siete Potencias (The Seven Powers). I remember staring at the Romanesque renderings and falling into trances; my fiction still dredges visions from this potent “big bang” of religious imagery.
