Project Spotlights

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The chaos, terror and uncertainty sown by mass deportation aren’t side effects — they’re all part of the plan. In Nevada, we’re learning how to fight back.

Poems featured in the Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing & Justice (2023) edited by David Luis Glisch-Sánchez & Nic Rodriguez-Villafañe

 In this article, three immigrant scholars (two with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and one formerly undocumented) come together to reflect and theorize about and from their experiences engaging in research with and about undocumented immigrants. Through a Chicanx/Latinx feminist framework, the authors share their historias to dissect their lived experiences as researchers and research participants...

This article challenges previous deficit narratives on Latinx communities by centering childhood re-memories of Latinxes and complicating our understanding of their childhood experiences in historically disinvested communities. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldnotes, we examine how Latinx participants recounted the impact that everyday racism, violence, patriarchy, and gentrification had on their childhood, their neighborhoods, and families...

In the US xenophobia has been on the rise and current immigration policies have increased the occurrence of family separation. Experiences with family separation profoundly impact children and have a detrimental effect on their development and educational outcomes. However, limited research has been conducted exploring the long-term impacts of family separation on education, particularly as it relates to Latinx tender-age children (below the age of twelve). In the current political climate, Latinx children are precariously positioned to live under the constant threat of family separation due to anti-immigrant policies and xenophobic school climates. This hostile environment can have devastating effects on the educational access and attainment of Latinx children.

 In seeking strategies for diversifying the US public school teacher workforce, education policymakers and teacher education programs need to meaningfully consider input from the families of PK-12 Students of Color. Using a Family Critical Race Theory (FamilyCrit) analysis, this article examines the educational experiences and related perspectives of Families of Color about teachers and the teaching profession. Findings reveal that Families of Color perceive teaching as a form of caring and teachers as extended family members. Families of Color wrestled with a divergence of values in encouraging their children to pursue their passions, while concomitantly confronting economic injustices. Findings challenge dominant narratives that Families of Color do not have college or career aspirations for their children. 

 Testimonio involves bearing witness to the collective experiences of historically marginalized communities, particularly as it relates to their oppression, resistance, and resilience. As an approach, it is an inherently decolonial process since it decenters Eurocentric knowledge and challenges power. Unlike oral history, memoir, or autoethnography, testimonio positions itself as an urgent and political voicing that rejects notions of objectivity and neutrality. Instead, it posits that there exist multiple truths of which each contributes to producing our understanding of a collective reality. Similar to these different practices, testimonio does not have a predictable or set structure as it can take the form of a poem, speech, interview, letter, and so on. Each of these, however, involves a public accounting of human experiences that have the ability to build solidarity. 

Latino Book Review (2021; 2019)

Intimacy looks different now. Except, intimacy for People of Color has always looked different. For Black and Brown communities this has been the root of our survival, the well from which we pull new strength to survive in sterile and unwholesome environments. 

I know what happens when children are separated from their families.They collapse into themselves and try to become as small as an atom, infinitely divided. 

Huizache (2018)

In post-racial America racialized stigmata and generalizations continue to dictate immigration policy and mainstream perceptions of Latino/a immigrants. New narratives— counter stories— allow us to redefine those images and develop an accurate understanding of individuals and their identity group.