How can the lived experiences of a family living between Mexico and the United States demonstrate the persistence of alternative modernity?

Beginning with an exploration of identity through comunalidad (living in collectiveness) in Oaxaca, author Teresa Figueroa Sanchez delves into the journey of three generations of her family, first in México City, then Santa Maria, California. Examining how her family struggled to live in the borderlands and transterritorial fragmented spaces, this autoethnography addresses the tools used to exercise control among immigrants living in the US and how they were stripped of their historical memory, as well as discussing themes such as agrarian capitalist economies, and Chicana praxis.

Drawing from Bolivar Echeverria and decolonial theory to illustrate how comunalidad, borderlands, objectified labor, lived labor, and la facultad enabled a family to live the unliveable, this book is ideal reading for students of Latinx Studies, Chicana/o Studies, Migrant Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and American Studies.

Teresa Figueroa Sanchez PhD is a public intellectual.