Imagine looking at AMerica as we know it, not as if there were a map, not as oif we are looking down from the sky, but as if we are on our backs looking up…from ancient land, before SPain and Russia, and the rest of Europe. Before Mexico. Before America.
That is just one topic I will talk about with my guest in this interview, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs.
Please see some of the titles to her work as a poet and scholar below.
Professor Gutierrez y Muhs is a renowned poet whose work has been published in numerous journals and collections in the U.S., France, Spain, and Chile. She is a full professor of Modern Languages and Cultures, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Seattle University.
She received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2000 in Spanish, Latin American Studies, and U.S. Latinx/Chicanx. She is a well-known scholar in the fields of Chicana and Latin American literature, cultural studies, and feminist theory. Gutiérrez y Muhs received two B.A.s from Occidental College, in Spanish and French, as well as two minors in Anthropology and Sociology and a Latin American Studies minor.
She has worked as Director of Women's Crisis Support and Shelter Services, South County Commission on Alcoholism, Youth Services and as a High School Counselor art Watsonville High School, where she also taught French.
After being tenured in March 2006, Gutiérrez y Muhs was named the 2007-2009 Wismer Professor for Gender and Diversity Studies at Seattle University. She was appointed as the Theiline Pigott-McCone Chair at the university for the period 2018–2020. In 2011, she represented the United States at the Kritya International Poetry Festival held in Nagpur, India, along with two other American poets.
She gained attention for her work as First Editor of the 2012 book Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, which discussed the experiences of various women of color in academia and later for her 2013 book Rebozos de Palabras.
Dr. Gutiérrez y Muhs speaks five languages fluently: Spanish, English, French, Italian, and Portuguese. She has taught and presented internationally in Spanish, English and French.
Gabriella grew up in Mexico and was named after the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
Works to explore, in chronological order, from most recent:
Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez y (2022). ¿How Many Indians Can We Be? Flowersong Press. ISBN 9781953447555.
Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez y (2017). Word Images New Perspectives on Canícula and Other Works by Norma Elia Cantú. University of Arizona Press. ISBN 9780816534098.
Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez y (2013). Rebozos de palabras: an Helena María Viramontes critical reader. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 9780816521364.
Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez y; Harris, Angela P.; Flores Niemann, Yolanda; González, Carmen G. (2012). Presumed incompetent: the intersections of race and class for women in academia. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. ISBN 9780874219227.
Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez y (2010). Communal feminisms: Chicanas, Chilenas, and cultural exile: theorizing the space of exile, class, and identity. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739144596.
Muhs, Gabriella Gutiérrez y (2002). A most improbable life: poems. Georgetown, Kentucky: Finishing Line Press. ISBN 9780972613668.
