Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández eds., "meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: “meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts” (U Arizona Press, 2025)
Host: Mary Reynolds
Guests: Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez & Anita Huízar-Hernández

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Overview

This episode features a conversation with Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández, editors of the new book meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts, the inaugural volume of the Arizona Crossroads series (University of Arizona Press, 2025). The discussion explores the project's origins, intent to center Arizona within broader borderlands scholarship, and the diverse methodologies—both personal and academic—that inform its contributions. Listeners get an in-depth look at how myths, histories, and lived experiences shape the multifaceted realities of the U.S. Southwest, particularly Arizona’s Latinx and Indigenous communities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Purpose of the Book

[03:33] Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez:

• The book grew out of connections formed at academic panels and community gatherings, notably among those researching marginalized Latinx communities in Arizona.
• Instead of a special journal issue, the project evolved into a book to better center Arizona while remaining in dialogue with the greater Southwest.

“We thought it was a really nice opportunity to bring Arizona to the center of the conversation and more importantly, to speak about marginalized communities who really have not been written about all that much within the larger trajectory of Arizona.” — Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez [04:23]

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2. Arizona Crossroads Series Vision

[05:52] Anita Huízar-Hernández:

• The Arizona Crossroads series treats Arizona as a crossroads—a lens for exploring broader regional dynamics, not an isolated case study.
• Each section of the book anchors in Arizona, then dialogues with issues playing out in adjacent Southwestern states (e.g., education policy, historical memory).

“We're interested in centering Arizona as a lens for larger dynamics…these various issues and topics such as education policy and historical memory are developing within and without the state.” — Anita Huízar-Hernández [06:37]

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3. Myths, Realities, and the Power of Narrative

[07:14] Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez:

• Discusses persistent myths about Arizona—often tied to controversial state policies—that overshadow the state’s complex, often underappreciated realities.
• Reflects on her transformation from perceiving Arizona via national headlines to discovering nuanced connections between rural Arizona and her native New Mexico.

“Listening to national news about Arizona really doesn't do Arizona justice...if you're not from Arizona, it's hard to appreciate what Arizona has to offer.” — Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez [07:40]

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4. Methodologies: Oral History and Its Value

[08:54] Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez:

• Highlights the work of Gloria Cuadra and the West Valley Voices project, emphasizing the significance of oral histories in capturing marginalized women’s labor and lived experiences.
• Addresses strengths (centering overlooked voices, creating collective memory) and limitations (subjectivity, reliance on memory) of oral histories.

“The real value of oral history...is that we get a sense, especially of what women's stories were within the historical record.” — Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez [09:54]

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5. Personal Connection: Rethinking Arizona’s Narrative

[12:59] Anita Huízar-Hernández:

• Shares her own experiences growing up in suburban Phoenix and feeling alienated from how Arizona is depicted in mainstream narratives ("cowboys, cacti, and copper”).
• Stories from outside Arizona (e.g., Boston, California) reinforced misleading stereotypes—prompting her academic focus on the true diversity and complexity of the state.

“The kinds of stories and questions that people asked me about what they imagined Arizona was was extremely surprising...having grown up in the state, I knew that wasn't true and that there was more to the story.” — Anita Huízar-Hernández [13:23]

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6. Literature and Expressive Culture’s Role

[15:27] Anita Huízar-Hernández:

• Literature and expressive culture by Chicanx, Latinx, and Indigenous creators provide detailed, specific alternatives to reductive, mainstream discourses about Arizona.
• Argues that all narratives, including mainstream and political ones, are “imagination,” but alternative voices offer nuance and challenge two-dimensional portrayals.

“There’s also a lot of invention in terms of these other narratives...what I think we see in these alternative narratives...is high degrees of specificity and high degrees of detail that really challenge these often two-dimensional portrayals.” — Anita Huízar-Hernández [15:39]

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7. Redefining Borders from Indigenous Perspectives

[17:03] Anita Huízar-Hernández:

• Discusses the Tohono O'odham Nation, whose land traverses the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S.-Mexican border negotiations ignored their presence, highlighting how borders are artificial constructions imposed on real communities.
• Such perspectives urge listeners to re-examine the power dynamics and historical processes behind border creation.

“We see how borders themselves are a superimposed narrative...those perspectives do is challenge us to rethink how are borders even drawn, and what do these borders tell us in terms of the power dynamics that have happened in the past.” — Anita Huízar-Hernández [17:13]

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8. Teaching and New Narratives for Arizona

[18:06] Anita Huízar-Hernández:

• Proposes encouraging students to see themselves as part of the unfolding Arizona narrative, emphasizing dynamism, agency, and interconnectedness.
• Advocates for moving beyond static, sanitized state histories to empower students to question and shape narratives.

“It's important for people to see Arizona and the borderlands more broadly as a place where each individual story is evolving...each person has agency if they see something that doesn't sit well with them, to say something about that and to be part of redefining those narratives.” — Anita Huízar-Hernández [18:35]

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9. Current & Future Projects

[19:15] Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez:

• Working on a monograph about Concho, Arizona, using the concept of “gatherings” (literal, interpretive, and speculative) as a framework for assembling community histories.
• Intends to continue publishing with the Arizona Crossroads series.

[20:15] Anita Huízar-Hernández:

• Preparing a book on the Cristero diaspora—Catholic activists who fled Mexico in the early 20th century—and their impact on Chicano/Latino literature.
• Hopes to broaden the concept of borders (historical, literary, ideological) in American studies.
• Both guests invite scholars with relevant research to submit proposals to the Arizona Crossroads and Border Vision series.

“Please, our email boxes are open and we would love to hear from you, and so don’t hesitate to send us a message.” — Anita Huízar-Hernández [20:55]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Listening to national news about Arizona really doesn't do Arizona justice.”
  — Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez [07:40]
• “It’s all imagination. The mainstream discourses are also imagination.”
  — Anita Huízar-Hernández [15:30]
• “See Arizona...as a place where each individual story is evolving and is dynamic and is in dialogue with one another, and that each person has agency...”
  — Anita Huízar-Hernández [18:35]
• “We are very much looking forward to that proposal and...we welcome other proposals as well.”
  — Anita Huízar-Hernández [20:20]

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Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Segment | |-------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:26 | Guest introductions | | 03:33 | Book origin story | | 05:52 | Arizona Crossroads series’ unique vision | | 07:14 | The power and persistence of Arizona myths | | 08:54 | The role and value of oral history | | 12:59 | Rethinking Arizona’s narrative from a personal perspective | | 15:27 | Literature and expressive culture as tools of redefinition | | 17:03 | Indigenous perspectives on the border | | 18:06 | Imagining new narratives for Arizona’s future generations | | 19:15 | Current and future research projects | | 20:15 | Calls for scholarly contributions to Crossroads/Border Vision |

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rich, multidimensional exploration of meXicana Roots and Routes, delving into the ways personal histories, alternative literatures, and oral traditions reclaim and redefine Arizona’s role in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands story. The conversation underscores the importance of specificity, complexity, and active participation in writing the histories of place—and invites listeners, scholars, and students alike to contribute to these evolving narratives.

Transcript

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[Vanessa Fonseca Chavez]

Hello.

[Mary Reynolds]

And welcome to another episode of the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Mary Reynolds, and I am publicity manager for the University of Arizona Press. Today I'm thrilled to talk with Vanessa Fonseca Chavez and Anita Huizar Hernandez, who are editors of the book Roots and Listening to People, Places, and Pasts, published by the University of Arizona Press in September 2025. In Mexicana roots and Roots, established and emerging scholars draw upon their rootedness in the U.S. southwest and U.S. mexico borderlands. The Mexicana contributors use personal and scholarly inquiry to discuss what it means to cultivate spaces of belonging, navigate language policies, and explore silences in various spaces, among other important themes. Vanessa and Anita, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. Let's start with introductions. Vanessa, tell us a little bit about yourself.

[Vanessa Fonseca Chavez]

Hi Mary, and thank you so much for having us on the podcast. We're thrilled to be guests today. My name is Vanessa Fonseca Chavez. I am originally from New Mexico. I grew up in New Mexico and When I was 25 I moved to Arizona and I learned a lot about Arizona since that time. I am a Associate professor of English at Arizona State University at the Polytechnic Campus and my other role is assistant vice provost of the Polytechnic Campus.

[Mary Reynolds]

Anita, your turn. Tell us about yourself.

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

Hi, Mary. Thanks so much for this opportunity to chat about the book with you today. So I am Anita Wizard Hernandez. I am an associate professor in the School of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University, and I'm also the associate director of the Hispanic Research center there, as well as the publisher and managing editor of the newly relaunched Bilingual Press, which is also housed at the Hispanic Research Center. I was born and raised in Arizona and actually am a very proud alum of Arizona State University. So I'm thrilled to be back home and also in dialogue with these other scholars thinking about Arizona and the borderlands more broadly.

[Mary Reynolds]

Thank you. Vanessa, the first question is for you. Tell us about the origin story of this book.

[Vanessa Fonseca Chavez]

Yes, thank you for that question. The origin story actually dates back a few years. I was on a panel for the Arizona History Convention conference with Christine Muddin, who is the founder of the Chicano Research Collection at Arizona State University, and also Andrea Tovar, who is an independent scholar who has written children's books about Arizona and who writes more broadly about education in Arizona. And we were on a panel together, moderated by Erica Perez from the University of Arizona, about, broadly speaking, Arizona and different areas that we were working on. At the time, my research was focusing on Apache county, more specifically Concho Arizona, but I was writing also about communities in northwestern New Mexico who had ties to the eastern part of the state of Arizona. Chris Marin was writing about educators out of Apache county, and Andrea Tovar was exploring her family roots in southern Arizona. And so we thought it was a really nice opportunity to bring Arizona to the center of the conversation and more importantly, to speak about marginalized communities who really have not been written about all that much within the larger trajectory of Arizona. So it really started there. And a few months later, Laura Key, who was working for the Journal of Arizona History at the time, reached out and said, we would love for you all to do a special issue on marginalized communities in Arizona with a focus on Latinx Arizona. And so that's really where the conversation started. And I think it was at a Chicano Latino Faculty Staff association gathering when I ran into Anita, and she said, what do you think about a book? And so we quickly shifted and we started thinking about a book rather than a special issue of the Journal of Arizona History to focus on these broad topics, really centering Arizona in the conversation and then bringing in other scholars who are also thinking about Arizona alongside other Southwestern states.

[Mary Reynolds]

Thank you, Anita. The second question is for you because you are also one of the series editors for the Arizona Crossroads series. Mexicana Roots and Roots is the inaugural publication of the Arizona Crossroads series where readers will find Arizona featured as a central node of borderlands, Roots and Roots. Will you give an example of how this book intentionally centers Arizona within broader cross state dialogues that reflect regional concerns in other Southwestern states?

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

Yes. So I am a series editor alongside Catherine Morrissey at University of Arizona and Eric Meeks at Northern Arizona University. So we are thinking as series editors about Arizona as a crossroads for many different themes and historical events that are central to the borderlands. That is why we are so excited about this particular volume being our inaugural volume. We think it really exemplifies the goals of Arizona Crossroads, which is not just a series about only Arizona. We're not limiting ourselves to things that have only happened in the state. Instead, we're interested in centering Arizona as a lens for larger dynamics that have happened. And you see that throughout the book. Structurally, each section of the book has an anchor within Arizona but is in dialogue with other states. And that was really important to us to think about how these various issues and topics such as education policy and historical memory are developing within and without the state.

[Mary Reynolds]

Thank you, Vanessa. Several chapters in Mexicana Roots and Roots talk about the disconnect between Arizona's reality and how it's imagined, both within the state and beyond. Why do you think myths about Arizona remain so powerful even today?

[Vanessa Fonseca Chavez]

I love this question, Mary, because it really does involve the perceptions I also had of Arizona. Listening to national news about Arizona really doesn't do Arizona justice. There's a lot of conversations around immigrant rights. There's a lot of conversations about Arizona sort of being a center point for other copycat laws that are based in anti immigration, anti English, anti ethnic studies. And that certainly was my experience when I first arrived to Arizona around 2008 to do my PhD. And every time I talked to people outside of the state, they would repeat conversations. They would say, why son is doing this? And I saw in the news that Arizona is doing that. And so I do think that if you're not from Arizona, it's hard to appreciate what Arizona has to offer. And that certainly was my perspective in the first few years of my PhD program. And more and more I came to love Arizona for lots of different reasons because I'm from a rural community in New Mexico. I also was really drawn to rural communities in Arizona. And a lot of my research started to focus on the connections between Arizona and New Mexico. We know they share a long territorial history. We know they bite for statehood at the same time for very different reasons. And they really develop side by side in very distinct ways.

[Mary Reynolds]

Thank you, Vanessa. One chapter focuses on Mexican women's labor in the cotton industry in Litchfield park, which is just west of Phoenix. It was a company town run by the Goodyear tire and Rubber Company in the early 1900s. Oral histories reveal both the hardships and resilience of Mexican women in company towns. What are the strengths and limitations of oral history and. And capturing stories that are often missing from official records?

[Vanessa Fonseca Chavez]

Well, first, I want to say that I really. I have a lot of respect for Gloria Cuadra. She was someone I looked up to as a growing oral historian. This is not something I was trained in, but something I came to start doing around 2015. And she was always. Her work was always really influential, especially the ways in which she centered women's stories. And she does a lot of this through oral history. She is part of a group at the West Valley campus at ASU called West Valley Voices, and they are intentionally building an archive of oral history centering on the West Valley. So I really like the focus on Litchfield park and Goodyear and all the communities in the West Valley that Gloria researches and the time that she spends with these women, hearing their stories. I think we often hear in oral history that there are kind of two tangents of thought when you're thinking about the importance of oral history. It's taken a long time for oral history to become a respected area of inquiry within the field of history more generally. And a lot of that is because it doesn't always link to recorded evidence. The real value of oral history, for me, and for. I think the field, is that we get a sense, especially of what women's stories were within the historical record. I think one of the downfalls to that which is often criticized is that it relies on one person's memory or a collective memory. And memory, of course, is faulty sometimes. It does exaggerate over time, and it does provide a different perspective than you may have gotten in that moment. I do think a lot of these memories are core memories for individuals in these communities, and so they do recall those pretty easily. And oral history can really help in the larger constellation of understanding a certain historical moment. And for the women in Gloria Quadras's article, I think it really does accomplish that goal.

[Mary Reynolds]

Thank you.

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[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

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[Mary Reynolds]

Learn [e-mail] Anita, your chapter is titled Between Place and Plot and you describe growing up in suburban Phoenix and feeling disconnected from the version of Arizona taught in schools Cowboys, cacti and copper. What finally made you see Arizona as a place worthy of serious academic attention? What was the turning point?

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

So in that chapter I talk a little bit about my own personal journey and really, for me, rethinking Arizona as a narrative. A Plot driven place happened when I was in dialogue with people who were not from Arizona and in many cases had never been in Arizona. So that first inflection point was when I was a child and my family relocated to Boston, Massachusetts, briefly, and then we came back to Arizona and. And when we were in Boston, the kinds of stories and questions that people asked me about what they imagined Arizona was was extremely surprising. People asked if I rode a horse to school. People asked my family if we had ever seen an ATM before. And this was in the 1990s, and Phoenix was a very developed suburban place. And so I was very thrown off by these kinds of questions and not entirely sure how to respond, which I talk about a little bit in the chapter. But as a child, I really didn't place that in a larger context. It wasn't until I again was outside of the state, this time in California doing my doctoral work, that again, Arizona was in the news, this time for the passage of Senate Bill 1070 in 2010. And a lot of my colleagues started talking about the state in ways that were eerily familiar to what I had heard as a child in Boston. Even though Boston, Massachusetts and San Diego, California are different places, I was still hearing underlying similar messages of Arizona being a backwards place, of Arizona being a place that had never really advanced in the ways that these particular people desired. But having grown up in the state, I knew that that wasn't true and that there was more to the story. And so that really is what I am looking at in that particular chapter. And what my larger research agenda has always been about is what is the rest of that story? And crucially, why is that story not being told within the state, but especially outside of the state?

[Mary Reynolds]

So your chapter highlights how literature and expressive culture from Chicanx, Latinx, and Indigenous creators offer a radically different Arizona than the one seen in mainstream media. What do these narratives do that traditional histories or political discourses often fail to do?

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

Similar to what Vanessa was discussing with oral history? I think literature and expressive culture can sometimes be dismissed as something that's just the imagination. And what I'm hoping to offer in this chapter and in these readings of various authors and artists, is that it's all imagination. The mainstream discourses are also imagination. There's also a lot of invention in terms of these other narratives that we're used to. And what I think we see in these alternative narratives by Chicanx, Latinx and indigenous authors and artists is high degrees of specificity and high degrees of detail that really challenge these often two dimensional portrayals of a state and a region, the borderlands in general, that is deeply complex and that can't be summarized in 140 characters and can't be flattened into a headline, even though that is sometimes the way that our media system works, that's simply not enough.

[Mary Reynolds]

Yeah, I think for me personally, I grew up in Arizona too, and I also felt that whenever I went somewhere else, people are like, oh, you know, you don't have cowboys going to school with you? And like, no, I'm in the suburbs. Anita, you also bring up how Indigenous communities like the Tehana O' Odham navigate a border that bisects their land. How do Indigenous perspectives challenge or redefine the very definition of a border?

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

So with the case of the Tohono O'Tam specifically, we see how borders themselves are a superimposed narrative. In this case, narratives that bisect entire communities. The Tohono atom were not even party to the conversations that happened between the United States and Mexico to create the border as we know it today as a result of the Gadsden Purchase. And so what I think those perspectives do is challenge us to rethink how are borders even drawn, and what do these borders tell us in terms of the power dynamics that have happened in the past and what are the points at which which we can rethink them as they exist in the present and the future.

[Mary Reynolds]

So you end with the idea that the Arizona story has often erased multiracial, metropolitan and borderland realities. If you had to craft a new introductory narrative about Arizona for a 4th grade Social Studies book today, what would it include?

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

Well, I love this question. Not having formal training, though, in K12 education, I would certainly leave it to my very well versed colleagues in terms of how to explain it to a fourth grader, maybe adding a sixth C. I don't know. I would leave that to them. But I can say that something that I've done in my own classes, both at the University of Arizona in Tucson and Arizona State University, is encourage students, whether they've they and their families have been in Arizona for many generations, or if they're new to the state as a student, to think about their lives and their experiences as intersecting with this complex history. Because I do think that it's important for people to see Arizona and the borderlands more broadly as a place where each individual story is evolving and is dynamic and is in dialogue with one another, and that each person has agency if they see something that doesn't sit well with them, to say something about that and to be part of redefining those narratives.

[Mary Reynolds]

Now that we know about the edited collection Mexicana Roots and Roots. Well, you each tell us briefly what you're working on now. Vanessa, you want to go first?

[Vanessa Fonseca Chavez]

Sure. Well, I'm happy to say we're both working on a next book and they're both focused on the US Mexico borderland slash Arizona. My specific focus will be on Concho, Arizona, which is a small community in the northeastern part of the state located in Apache County. And I'm throwing around the idea, and I did this with Anita the other day, and I'm happy that she responded positively about the idea of gatherings and gatherings as folks gather together, what we gather and then sort of a speculative gather, you know, when we're filling in the gaps of things that we don't know. And we, we gather that this happened or we gather that, you know, these, these events occurred. And I like that framework, especially within the Arizona Crossroads series, because I will be submitting it to the series and I'm not trying to monopolize the series, but I do think it is actually the, the perfect place to, to publish my next monograph. And I'm looking forward to submitting that proposal by the end of this year.

[Mary Reynolds]

Anita, do you have anything else that you're working on or you want to say more about that project?

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

Yes. Well, I wanted to say that we are very much looking forward to that proposal and that as series editors, we welcome other proposals as well. So for any of our listeners who are working on topics that touch on Arizona, that think about Arizona as a crossroads, but they don't have to be limited to just Arizona, please. Our email boxes are open and we would love to hear from you, and so don't hesitate to send us a message. Personally, I am working on a book that's revisiting the early 20th century. So I am looking at the Cristero diaspora in the United States. This is a group of Catholic activists who in this case left Mexico following the revolution because of some secularizing policies that were happening there. And I am looking at the influence of what they wrote in the United States on the development of Chicano and Latino literature, thinking of all kinds of different borders. So the borders that are historical, borders that are political also in terms of the way that we think of Chicano and Latino literature and conservative versus radical, and how those terms do or don't apply when we're thinking in this trans temporal kind of framework. And I am excited to be preparing that proposal for the Border Vision series, which is also at University of Arizona Press. And I'm sure that Vanessa and her co editor of that series, their inboxes are also open to border crossing scholarly studies.

[Mary Reynolds]

Well, that's great. Thank you for talking a little bit more about the Arizona Crossroads series as well as the Border Vision series at University of Arizona Press. And for listeners who want to engage more about what the editors have been telling us, you can, of course, read the book Me Roots and Listening to People, Places and Paths, published by the University of Arizona Press in 2025. Vanessa and Anita, thank you so much for being with me today on the podcast.

[Vanessa Fonseca Chavez]

Thank you for having us.

[Anita Huizar Hernandez]

Mary thank you.