While the border is commonly depicted as a site of danger or crisis, Ruiz shows it as a place of community and care. Families move between cultures with ease, switching between Spanish and English, crossing bridges and borders not in fear but as a part of daily life. This depiction honors South Texas as complex, vibrant, and deeply American.

In science fiction shows and films, there is an erasure of brown subjects that renders them as collateral  damage, too incompatible with advanced technology which leads to them doing ‘lesser work’, as well as perpetually "alien". As we look at season 2 and season 3 in Umbrella Academy, we see the concepts of Chicanafuturism and Afrofuturism play out through the stories of Diego and Allison Hargreeves.

With her evocative storytelling, Melissa Coss Aquino turns a story about two cousin-turned-sisters dealing drugs into a character study.