The Wound and the Stitch has won several honors:
Conference on College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award for a Monograph (2026)
American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Book of the Year Award for Early Career (2026)
Modern Language Association’s Prize in Latina/o & Chicana/o Literary & Cultural Studies (Honorable Mention 2025)
National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize (Honorable Mention 2025)
International Latino Book Awards (2025)—Best Academic Book (College Level); Honorable Mention: Best History Book; Honorable Mention: Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Nonfiction; and Honorable Mention: Best First Book (Nonfiction).
The Wound and the Stitch examines Chicana textual and visual rhetorics that focus on the phenomenon of wounds and a stitching together of fragmented selves as stemming from female Catholic devotional rhetorics yet also interweaves ancient Mesoamerican philosophy. I consider how rhetorics of the Virgin Mary’s emotional woundedness engage with Nahua metaphysical understandings of securing stability during lived turmoil through application of nepantla.
In this way, The Wound and the Stitch offers a historical rhetorical genealogy that develops insights from my work in Chicana literary and visual studies, decolonial feminist theory, and medical humanities; the end goal is to confirm my claim that a ubiquitous form of Chicana self-representation strategies, notably manifested in late-twentieth-century Californian print media and art, positions woundedness as a conceptual lens through which to confront violations against Chicana bodies and challenge normalized categories placed on Chicana identities.
While I claim that Chicana self-representation of fragmentation through rhetorics of woundedness can be generative and healing, they can also be exploited by an outside gaze. I accordingly examine in each section of The Wound and the Stitch distinct application of this rhetorical inheritance as rendered by Chicana rhetors who conceive a spectrum of wounds—metaphorical, physical, historical, and linguistic—and strategies to repurpose woundedness to advocate redress.
Conference on College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award for a Monograph (2026)
American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Book of the Year Award for Early Career (2026)
Modern Language Association’s Prize in Latina/o & Chicana/o Literary & Cultural Studies (Honorable Mention 2025)
National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize (Honorable Mention 2025)
International Latino Book Awards (2025)—Best Academic Book (College Level); Honorable Mention: Best History Book; Honorable Mention: Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Nonfiction; and Honorable Mention: Best First Book (Nonfiction).
The Wound and the Stitch examines Chicana textual and visual rhetorics that focus on the phenomenon of wounds and a stitching together of fragmented selves as stemming from female Catholic devotional rhetorics yet also interweaves ancient Mesoamerican philosophy. I consider how rhetorics of the Virgin Mary’s emotional woundedness engage with Nahua metaphysical understandings of securing stability during lived turmoil through application of nepantla.
In this way, The Wound and the Stitch offers a historical rhetorical genealogy that develops insights from my work in Chicana literary and visual studies, decolonial feminist theory, and medical humanities; the end goal is to confirm my claim that a ubiquitous form of Chicana self-representation strategies, notably manifested in late-twentieth-century Californian print media and art, positions woundedness as a conceptual lens through which to confront violations against Chicana bodies and challenge normalized categories placed on Chicana identities.
While I claim that Chicana self-representation of fragmentation through rhetorics of woundedness can be generative and healing, they can also be exploited by an outside gaze. I accordingly examine in each section of The Wound and the Stitch distinct application of this rhetorical inheritance as rendered by Chicana rhetors who conceive a spectrum of wounds—metaphorical, physical, historical, and linguistic—and strategies to repurpose woundedness to advocate redress.