
As an ethnic studies artist-scholar, I am invested in the creation of media production. I strongly believe that film documentaries, podcasts, zines, photography, screenwriting, mixed-media art, and performance-art, are powerful tools of storytelling, that disrupt the inaccessible language that oftentimes consumes academic publishing. My creative projects are inspired by my research, community work, and family archives. I am currently working on a documentary companion to my book Intoxicating Pleasures, which tells the story of late Chicana singer Jenni Rivera’s fandom. I am also working on a polaroid series that showcases the dignity of janitorial workers in Long Beach, California and collages about Latinas in the pornographic archive.
I have completed film ethnographies about Banda Sinaloense in Los Angeles, the burlesque community in San Diego, and transnational love letters between immigrants from Mexico.

