Cover of The Altar of My Soul by Marta Moreno Vega

The Altar of My Soul

The Living Traditions of Santeria

Marta Moreno Vega · 2000

A Puerto Rican scholar returns to the faith her grandmother practised and she was taught to hide.

Marta Moreno Vega grew up in Spanish Harlem watching her grandmother keep a practice the family did not discuss, and returned to it as an adult, eventually being initiated as a Santeria priestess in Cuba. Her memoir moves between that personal recovery and an account of the religion itself, its Yoruba origins, its survival through slavery under Catholic cover, and its rituals, written from inside rather than about.

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Xochitl Gonzalez

Novelist and Staff Writer at The Atlantic

In this heartfelt memoir, Moreno Vega recounts her journey around and into the faith, offering up a story of personal growth and spiritual homecoming.

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