Dr. Susy Zepeda

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Dr. Susy Zepeda (she/they/ella) was born in Monterey Park, California to two Mexican migrants from El Limón, Jalisco and Chínipas, Chihuahua. Raised primarily by her working-class Mexicana mother, tías and tíos, and prima/os along with her two sisters in the Los Angeles area, she learned since childhood the importance of supporting community and holding matriarchal relations sacred in times of crisis and healing.  Susy remembers as a child often climbing the cerro to see la Virgencita Tonantzin and visiting el rio in her mother’s hometown in Mexico with instruction and guidance from her abuelita, Rosario. This journey infused Susy’s path of walking in prayer and armonía con la madre tierra.

Susy is currently an Associate Professor in Department of Chicana/o/x Studies at the University of California, Davis (Patwin Homeland). As a queer Xicana Indígena, her scholarly work is intentionally interdisciplinary, decolonial, and feminist in a community-centered and grounded way. Her research and teaching focus on: critical race and ethnic studies, Xicana Indígena spirit work, critical feminist of color collaborative methodologies, queer of color and Indigenous communities, decolonization, oral history, and intergenerational healing.  She has established two courses at UCD, Decolonizing Spirit and Food Justice. Dr. Zepeda’s writing appears in the anthologies Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices and Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento. In 2020, she published the critical essay, “Decolonizing Xicana/x Studies: Healing the Susto of De-indigenization” in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies as part of the Dossier: Fifty Years of Chicana Feminist Praxis, Theory, and Resistance. Susy’s first book, Queering Mesoamerican Diasporas: Remembering Xicana Indígena Ancestries, entered the world in 2022, published by the University of Illinois Press as part of the Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, and Indigenous Studies book series.

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