Elizabeth Farfán-Santos is a Chicana author and medical anthropologist who grew up in a Mexican, immigrant, working class household led by women. She is the author of two nonfiction books. Her newest book, Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing (2022 UT Press) is creative nonfiction that blends ethnography, memoir, testimonio and art to communicate the multiple layers of vulnerable writing.
A creative writer at heart, Elizabeth writes about the everyday human experience, the layered lives we live without thinking, life in the unplanned in-between, in the cracks, borders, and margins. Especially interested in identity formations and the ways in which we understand and experience health and illness, Elizabeth has published academic articles, interdisciplinary books, poetry, and opinion essays that navigate the layered sedimentation of being human, racialized, gendered, marginalized, resilient. Elizabeth’s writing passionately demands that we feel something above all else.
She has a PhD and MA in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA in Anthropology from Trinity University.
More recently, Elizabeth launched Dreamers Books + Culture, a new independent bookstore in Houston that specializes in Latiné and Latin American books and authors. Dreamers aims to change the literary landscape of Houston, creating a necessary space for the diversity of Latiné literature, scholarship and authors.
Elizabeth Farfán-Santos 