About me

A Black Dominicana, poet, stationary addict, #DominicanKitchenDiva, and scholar.

I was born and raised in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. Raised by the grace of a single immigrant Dominican mother from Bonao–a place where I spent my summers as a child and would later be an important site for the imagination of my creativity as well as my scholarship.

I earned my undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago, an M.A. in African and African Diaspora Studies, as well as a PhD in Latin American Literatures and Cultures from the University of Texas at Austin. Currently, I am an Associate Professor of AfroLatinx Studies in the Latino Caribbean Studies and Africana Studies Departments, as well as graduate faculty in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

My book Ciguapa Unbound: AfroLatinx Feminist Epistemologies of Tranceformation (NYU Press, 2026) examines the narratives put forth by transnational Black Dominican writers, artists, and pop culture icons and how they embody their blackness, produce knowledge, and shift the geographies of Black feminism. My scholarship has been published in academic journals such as Small Axe, The Black Scholar, Post45, Latinx Talk, Label Me Latina/o, and more.

I have served as a media and expert contributor for Telemundo Chicago, NPR, PBS, Buzzfeed, ABC Chicago, The New Jersey State Ledger, and VICE among others. I provide cultural consultation services, speaking engagements, and workshops for corporate, non-profit, and community-based organizations. In the past I have worked with Redbull, Better Mortgage, JetBlue, Getty Images, Univision, UnidosUS, IDEO, Texas Tech University Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield of America, and others.

I am a member of the Black Latinas Know Collective, serve as an editorial board member for NYU The Latinx Project’s publication Intervenxions, and previously part of the editorial board for Latinx Talk–a peer-reviewed site of original research in Latinx Studies.