Mamá. Scholar. comunidad.

I’ve been committed to mapping projects of resistance, exploring our shared human experience and advancing social justice for the last 30-years. As an interdisciplinary scholar, I write about transnational community formations, autonomy, mothering, and gendered migration.

My work is published in several book anthologies, and in journals such as Gender & Society, Feminist Formations, Aztlán, and Chicana/Latina Studies; and in online outlets such as The Feminist Wire, Truth Out and Latino Rebels. I have two books, one is the co-edited The Chicana M(other)work Anthology (2019) and the second is Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect (2021), winner of the Book of the Year Award from the National Association for Chicana/o Studies, 2023. I’ve been involved in many grassroots projects where we used critical pedagogy, principles of sustainability, and community-based arts, performance, and visual media to work towards radical transformation in our communities. These modalities were introduced to me by the student movement for Chicanx Studies that I participated in the 1990s, the Zapatista uprising and philosophy, and by my involvement with Incite! Woman of Color Against Violence, a network of radical feminists of color organizing to end state violence and violence in our homes and communities.

I am a founding member of the Chicana M(other)work Collective, the Binational Artist in Residency project, and have served on the editorial review board for Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social and Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. I taught at Arizona State University for nine years, at Northern Arizona University for two years, and have been at the University of Arizona since 2016 where I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies.