Current & Upcoming Projects
Coming Soon to Publication in 2024
"Dr. Muñoz gorgeously tells us the story of her abuelos and her border family in El Bowie Bakery. From La Union, New Mexico, the heartwarming and exciting story is a multi-generational gift to middle-grade readers who want to belong in many places and cultures with a pride that instead of taking sides chooses a new whole created from love. In this land we have forged our lives together. What a wonderful story to give to our children."
---Sergio Troncoso, author of Nobody's Pilgrims and A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son
El Bowie Bakery
Manuscript Synopsis
As a ninth-generation Bordercana, Toni and her family are a mestizo-mix of Native American and Mexican American heritage. They never left the Border. Growing up, she was never made to think of the Border—this in-between space—as two different spaces. In this multi-generational nonfiction story, Toni retells her abuelos’ love story to her young daughters while sharing the history of the area and its Latinx people. In La Union, the town where her family lives and where their family has always lived, the adobe dwellings are made from la tierra. The same earth is a womb for fallen ancestors—the Apaches who once roamed the area, the Spaniards who came before 1821, the Mexicans who came after, and the Mexican Americans and Bordercanx who inhabit the area today. From start to finish, this story is the embodiment of a Mexican American, double hybridized population. It is among the many stories of people still thriving and not forgotten along the US-Mexico. Border.
Research Projects
CUSLAI Community Digital Archive Project
In 2020, as a research assistant for the Center for US-Latin America Initiatives (CUSLAI), Muñoz helped establish the CUSLAI Community Digital Archive Project, securing a $30,000 grant through initial fundraising and grant writing from Texas Women’s Foundation for the high-resolution equipment needed to digitize historical documents. In 2021, she finalized another $30,000 grant for Humanitarian Outreach for Migrant Emotional Health (H.O.M.E.) providing humanitarian outreach to migrants and at-risk asylum seekers while finishing her Human Subjects Protection IRB Training.
In the fall of 2022, Muñoz and her team conducted 27 video interviews and produced original photography of multigenerational, double-hybridized Border families, detained migrants, and asylum seekers situated along the US-Mexico Border. In the Spring Semester 2023, her Latinx: Identity, Politics, and Culture course deconstructed some of these digital histories and oral stories and repackaged them centered on interdisciplinary themes, that also incorporate some of the stories from the course’s students.
Growing up in a predominantly Mexican American region of the country located in the American Southwest, full of rich flavors and heritage and pride in preserving both, Muñoz did not fully understand the social and economic inequities endured by her people and their community compared to the rest of the country and how those differences did not effectuate opportunities and security for this population. Through it all, her family and community continued to be her inspiration. With their encouragement, she found ways to document their stories, find he voice, and share the inequities and travesties felt by her people—universal stories that other oppressed cultures and communities worldwide often experienced.
Through this project, Muñoz hopes to assert herself as a leader in this field, focusing on the US-Mexico Border, capturing and curating a diverse array of voices from the area and across our borders.
CUSLAI Community Digital Archive Project: Student Highlights
Isaac S. Del Bosque
Abstract
Gloria Anzaldúa describes the borderland as “a vague undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition” (Anzaldúa 17). This emotional residue is felt by immigrants and becomes generational, with remnants felt by their children and their offspring. This paper looks at emotional Nepantla — the space in which people between two cultures navigate internal struggles ranging from grief, depression, and death — which may initially pull people apart but can also bring communities together when recognized. I utilize an autoethnographic method of study to look within the Mexican American identity and the emotional Nepantla I have experienced. Janne Tienari suggests that “Autoethnographies enable us to illuminate social phenomena, experiences, and identities that would be difficult to capture otherwise” (77). Using raw interviews from author Sergio Troncoso, literature from writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, and historical data from historian Rodolfo Acuña to broaden the understanding of Nepantla, I examine how Latinx communities in the United States navigate and strengthen that space of emotional Nepantla. I also look at how that space has already been utilized as a tool for educational learning and how it can be further expanded in a classroom setting.
Kevin Patterson
Abstract
The complexity of linguistics has transformed how people interact, perceive, and communicate on the US-Mexico Border throughout history. “Even though all humans have a right to speak in their primary language, the U.S. Immigration system simply isn’t built that way…In effect, things get lost in translation” (Ramos, 2020, p.56). The border showcases different variations and dynamics of language as demonstrated in English, Spanish, and other languages. I will examine the linguistic impact of the US-Mexico Border on immigration and the educational system at different historical points using the social interactionist theory to deconstruct these dynamics on the border.
With the aid of digital interviews conducted by the CUSLAI Community Digital Archive Project, I will highlight common themes of linguistic hybridity and how barriers in perception have formed over time. On the importance of oral history, scholar Steven High states, “Digital technologies are opening up new horizons for community and public engagement on the one hand and sharing authority in the research process on the other” (2010, p.102). As such, this paper provides an opportunity for future research into linguistics on how current Bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs can be seen in schools stemming from the changes made throughout United States history.