Mario García's subtitle echoes the theme of the prominent exhibition ‘Chicano art: resistance and affirmation’. García suggests these same forces are at work for Mexican American Catholics. He presents eight twentieth-century case studies in which Chicanas/os use their religion to resist the dominant Anglo community and affirm their mexicanidad. These studies present a range of situations in which Chicano/a Catholics negotiate their ethnic and religious identities. Two chapters emphasise the popular religious practices of Chicanas/os: one draws on a Works Progress Administration project in northern New Mexico in the mid- to late 1930s, the other is a contemporary glimpse at the range of expressions of Catholicism lived by Chicanas/os and Latinas/os. Examining these chapters together demonstrates the persistence of practices that are centred in the community and the home, rather than in the church. These practices serve to affirm Mexican ethnic identity in a Church that has at times sought to eliminate nationalistic religious expression. The irony, of course, is that Latinas/os are the fastest growing Catholic population in the United States. Three chapters feature the work of priests. García considers the written legacy of Fray Angélico Chavez whose oppositional history, he argues, asserted an hispano voice in resistance to the rising ‘American’ historical narrative of the mid-twentieth century in northern New Mexico. In chapter vi, García introduces three Chicano priests (whom he calls community priests), who worked with local communities during the Chicana/o Movement, embracing Catholic social doctrine in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California, and San Antonio, Texas. Later, García tells the story of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles in the 1980s through the life and work of Fr Luis Olivares. The political need to protect those fleeing war-torn El Salvador led to a pan-Latino identity within many Chicana/o Catholic communities. Other case studies consider the work of laymen in south Texas in the first half of the twentieth century, the mid-century work of the National Catholic Welfare Conference to address the growing Mexican American population, and Católicos por la Raza, which pushed the archdiocese of Los Angeles to address the needs of Chicana/o Catholics during the Chicana/o Movement. This is a personal project for García, who is himself a Chicano Catholic. He works to bring the Catholic Church into Chicana/o history and to bring the Chicana/o story into US Catholic history. These are both laudable goals, and he is to some degree successful with both. García combats the legacy of the Chicana/o Movement as non- or anti-Catholic, but also reinforces classic Chicano studies narratives of masculinity and geography – that Chicanas/os are all men and are limited to the southwest – even more specifically in this text to south Texas, southern California and northern New Mexico. With the exception of a section in the final chapter on popular piety, the overwhelming emphasis is on the writing and leadership of Chicana/o Catholics, to the exclusion of women who have sustained Chicana/o Catholicism for decades. Overall, though, this book brings much needed revision to the discourses of US Catholic history and Chicano history.