She received her B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brown University and M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After college, she taught fourth, fifth, and sixth grade Spanish and sixth grade English. After graduate school, she held a Carolina Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity. She is currently writing a book about representations of harm in late twentieth century Latina literature. She is also interested in coming of age Latina/o narratives and Latinas/os’ experiences with the U.S. educational system.