This chapter asks how religion has been understood in Chicanx literature by connecting the performance of syncretic spiritual labor with the task of telling stories about the exploitation of Chicanx labor. It takes Tomás Rivera’s 1971 … y no se lo tragó la tierra (Tierra) and Denise Chávez’s 1994 novel Face of an Angel (Angel) as test cases. By closely revisiting a work of criticism that is emblematic of the way Chicanx literary criticism approaches the role of religion in literature, this chapter shows how reproductive labor, service labor, and syncretic religious labor are inadvertently obscured by the urgency of attending to class identity and farm labor in the case of Tierra, or non-religious spirituality and fetishized indigeneity in the case of Angel. In particular, the chapter returns to Ramón Saldívar’s germinal reading of Rivera’s novel and Theresa Delgadillo’s incisive interpretation of Chávez’s novel to explore how subtly and entirely certain subjectivities become illegible. Drawing inspiration from scholars such as Judith Butler, the chapter scrutinizes notions of agency within gender performance and advocates for a paradigm shift that acknowledges the deeper significance found in seemingly menial tasks, such as washing dishes or clearing used plates.