Academic Publications
“Rebel Archive: A History of La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote”
As a participant in and observer of this process, and as a collaborator and historian, I seek to construct a history of the archive—its movement from a collection of private documents to an organized and catalogued repository and ultimately into a unique cultural and intellectual space: La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote.
"Field of Dreams: Migrant Futboleros in Greater Mexico," Boom California This essay uses the life trajectory of Aurelio Sánchez to trace how soccer first took root in Mexico, and then how Mexicans and Mexican-Americans slowly laid the groundwork for the now-explosive popularity of the sport in the United States. This part of a new project on soccer, Mexican migrants, and Mexican-Americans.
“Transnationalism in the Life and Letters of the Venegas family,” The History of the Family.
Special Issue on Migrant Correspondence, History of the Family, Fall 2016
Abstract: Married in 1919, Miguel and Dolores migrated from Zapotlanejo, Jalisco to Los Angeles, California in 1927, where they raised ten children, nine boys and one girl. Like Mexicans migrant families throughout the U.S. Southwest they experienced leaving Mexico and making a new home, endured the Great Depression, and in many cases, sent their children off to fight in World War II. Throughout this time period, they corresponded with their relatives in Mexico, providing historians with a rare collection of Mexican migrant personal correspondence. Using this new collection of letters, housed at Loyola Marymount University’s Department of Archives and Special Collections, this article constructs the role of letters in the formation of a transnational family and the family as transnational resource and strategy.
East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte (Rutgers Press, 2020)
East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, is an edited collection of thirty-one essays that trace the experience of a California community over three centuries, from eighteenth-century Spanish colonization to twenty-first century globalization. Employing traditional historical scholarship, oral history, creative nonfiction and original art, the book provides a radical new history of El Monte and South El Monte, showing how interdisciplinary and community-engaged scholarship can break new ground in public history. East of East tells stories that have been excluded from dominant historical narratives—stories that long survived only in the popular memory of residents, as well as narratives that have been almost completely buried and all but forgotten. Its cast of characters includes white vigilantes, Mexican anarchists, Japanese farmers, labor organizers, civil rights pioneers, and punk rockers, as well as the ordinary and unnamed youth who generated a vibrant local culture at dances and dive bars.
“Tin Tan” in Icons of Mexico
Eric Zolov edt. (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, September 2015)
This 2,000 word entry follows the Mexican born, borderlands raised, and pachuco dressing Tin Tan from his early days on the radio in the U.S. borderlands to his celebrated film career.
“My Father’s Charreria, My Rodeo: A Paisa Journey”
Boom: A Journal of California (A Publication of UC Press) Spring 2014. Vol 4. No. 1
When my father passed away, a belt buckle became the only physical object connecting me to his past. Using family photo albums and personal narrative, this essay places my father, his belt buckle, and my own migrant experience, within the larger history of Charreria/Rodeo in Mexico and the United States.
Other Publications
“Pocho Blues” Chapbook, (Sybil Press, 2021)
“East of East”
May 2014 to Present, Edit KCET Departures Column titled
"Lobo" Entropy Literary Magazine, Fall 2017
Burn The Wagon: Writings from Greater El Monte (SEMAP & La Casa, 2017)
“Migrant Dreams and Soccer Journeys"
KCET, East of East, June 19, 2015
“In Search of Buried Histories in South El Monte and El Monte”
KCET, East of East, January 9, 2015
“Domestic Art: Nannies, Immigrants, and Labor”
Tropics of Meta, February 27, 2013
“El PAN y el Voto Migrante”
Letras Libres, Frontera Adentro, February 7, 2012
“Forjando Identidades en la Urbe de Hierro: Mexicanos en Nueva York”
Letras Libres, Frontera Adentro, September 20, 2011
“A Posthumous Search For El Abuelo”
Acentos Review, February 2011
“Celebrating the Virgen de Guadalupe in New York City”
Latin America Dispatch, January 7, 2011