Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Dramatis Personae
Note on Transliteration
Regional Map of South India

Introduction

1. Rosalind
2. The Place, the People, the Practices: Our Lady Jecintho and the Quest for Embodied Wholeness
3. Authenticity and Double Trouble: The Case of Nancy-as-Jecintho
4. Possession, Processions, and Authority
Interlude
5. Return to Maataapuram
6. Women's Work, Gendered Space, And the Dangerous Labor of (Virgin) Birth
7. Memory, Mimesis, and Healing
8. Conclusion: Departures and Homecomings

Bibliography

About the Author

Kristin C. Bloomer is Associate Professor of Religion at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

Reviews

"The study is a remarkable piece of work because it gives deep insights into hidden but highly popular religious practices that flourish in the borderland between local forms of Catholicism and Hinduism ... Possessed by the Virgin is highly recommended for readers with a general interest in the religious landscape of India and equally for scholars specialized in the Tamil sphere." -- Matthias Frenz, Journal of World Christianity
"Bloomer's Possessed by the Virgin is an enlightening, powerful, and touching account of Marian possession in Tamil Nadu. It accomplishes the rare task of accounting for the complexity of this phenomenon, while maintaining a remarkable analytical clarity. The book also points to new promising avenues of inquiry." -- Margherita Trento , Journal of Religion
"Bloomer's book is a compelling account of religious plurality and gendered agency in an India that is increasingly under the stifling stranglehold of Hindu nationalism. In this, its attention to the minutiae of the lives of women who claim to be possessed by the Virgin Mary allows the book to tell a story about everyday inhabitations of religion that critique and subvert hegemonic forms, creating sites of potential in local contexts, even as they do not enact
wide-ranging structural transformations."--Sneha Krishnan, Reading Religion
"I know of no book remotely like Kristin Bloomer's Possessed by the Virgin. It reads like a powerful, beautifully written novel; the people are so real, you cannot wait to find out what happens to them. But the same detail that brings the characters to life-particularly but not only the Indian women who are possessed by Mary-is also what gives the book its solid authenticity as a great work of scholarship, a path-breaking study of villagers and
city-dwellers who live passionately in two religions, Marian Catholicism and Tamil Hinduism. Bloomer captures in rich historical, anthropological, and richly literary detail the tragedy of Dalit (Untouchable) life and
the astonishing power of religion to heal."--Wendy Doniger, author of On Hinduism
"From the borrowed bodies of three Tamil women, the Virgin Mary acts and speaks. Tracing the effects of possession practices as they defy and perpetuate social, political, and religious norms, Bloomer also carefully attends to each woman's struggles and victories in ways that respectfully humanize. Sophisticated and moving, accessibly written with stunning detail, this book is a scholarly achievement that is very hard to put down."--Corinne Dempsey, author of
Bridges between Worlds: Spirits and Spirit Work in Northern Iceland
"Bloomer's descriptive virtuosity graces the work, and surpasses that of many other excellent ethnographies in its uncommon sympathy, even tenderness, for those she describes. With the novelist's ability to evoke, and the poet's ability to do so economically, Bloomer's storytelling is so powerful and poignant that the reader sometimes realizes only after reflection what a profound contribution Possessed by the Virgin has made to ongoing scholarly
discussions of gender, hegemony, selfhood, and agency."--Chad M. Bauman, Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Religion and Classics, Butler University