In Undocumented Motherhood, medical anthropologist Elizabeth Farfán-Santos tells the story of Claudia García, a mother who made a treacherous border crossing in desperate search of treatment for her toddler’s hearing impairment. Claudia’s story opens the door to recollections of Farfán-Santos’s own mother’s border crossing, and to an unflinching analysis of how public healthcare systems handle those of undocumented and disabled status. Elizabeth Cummins Muñoz’s Booklist-starred Mothercoin pulls back the curtain on a different type of mother figure: the immigrant nannies of Houston. These women have taken up child-rearing in exchange for a precarious livelihood—with effects hardly appreciated by their employers or the community at large.

Moderator: Diana Anzaldua is a social change activist and leader in mental health equity and reform. She is also a trauma-informed founder and owner of an award winning trauma-integrative health and wellness center and has received numerous awards for her work in community healing, public service, and leadership.Elizabeth Farfán-Santos, Elizabeth Cummins Muñoz, Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing, Mothercoin: The Stories of Immigrant Nannies