Unorthodox Kin Quotes

“From an anthropological perspective, identities are neither fixed nor inherent, but are created and reproduced continuously through social practice and in interaction with others.”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

“Both commensality, the act of eating together, and the sharing of food are powerful means by which human beings create, express, and solidify feelings of mutual trust, intimacy, and kinship.”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

“What is empathy, after all, if not an act of concentrated emotional engagement? And is that emotional engagement, however briefly expressed, not a potential step toward a lasting bond?”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

“Relatedness - whether imagined or lived out face-to-face - is a social fact, and it is not limited to "kinship" as mapped in the traditional genealogical chart. It is precisely the term's flexibility that makes it so analytically useful.”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

“This is a study of global interconnection, not only to the degree that the infrastructure and cultural flows of globalisation enable the kinds of imaginings and interactions I explore in the pages that follow, but equally in subjective perceptions of being connected to others, both far back in time and widely around the globe.”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

“In many cultural contexts, shared emotion is a potent medium through which people come to feel connected and, over time, to see one another as kin.”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

“Belonging, after all, is a particular kind of relation, one that arises amidst subjective experiences of mutual connection.”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

“While imagination is a faculty of the individual, imaginaries - "shared, socially transmitted representational assemblages" of people, places, and events - are a collective resource, the sum total of available imagery and ideas circulating in media, advertising, literature, word of mouth, and the like.”
― Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging