Carla Trujillo

This episode features Chicana lesbian writer Carla Trujillo, who is the editor of two anthologies, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About and Living Chicana Theory. She's also the author of two novels, What Night Brings and Faith and Fat Chances. In this plática, Carla discusses her upbringing in New Mexico and Northern California, her entrance into editing anthologies and writing novels, and her experience forging connections with other Chicana lesbian writers, including Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, and Juanita Diaz during the 1990s. She also discusses her current writing goals and shares exciting news about future publications.

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Meagan Solomon: Welcome to Malflora Podcast, a series of pláticas, or community dialogues, with Latina/Latine lesbians.

Alexandra Nichole Salazar: Pláticas are a Latina feminist methodology rooted in the belief that we produce knowledge about our lived experiences through conversation.

Mariana Meriqui Rodrigues: This podcast is published by Malflora Collective, a digital platform dedicated to preserving the lives and legacies of Latina/Latine lesbians. And we are your hosts:

Meagan Solomon: Meagan Solomon 

Alexandra Nichole Salazar: Alexandra Nichole Salazar

Mariana Meriqui Rodrigues: Mariana Meriqui Rodrigues 

Meagan Solomon: Today's episode features Chicana lesbian writer Carla Trujillo, who is the editor of two anthologies, Living Chicana Theory and Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About. She's also the author of two novels, What Night Brings and Faith and Fat Chances. In this plática, Carla shares her journey as a writer navigating the white-dominated landscape of mainstream publishing, while forging life-sustaining bonds with fellow Chicana feminists along the way.

I'm Meagan Solomon, your host for this episode. Thank you for tuning in! 

Welcome, Carla. We are so excited to have you on Malflora Podcast. I know many of our listeners will already be familiar with your work, but might be less familiar with your background and your story, so to begin, can you share a bit about your upbringing and how it has influenced your work as a writer?

Carla Trujillo: Um, I was born in New Mexico. I am a first generation college student.

I grew up in California, Northern California. My background is working class. My father dropped out of high school. My mother completed high school. And my father joined the Navy. And, uh, so I was in New Mexico for a while with family on both sides of my family, uh, Northern New Mexico, a little town called Las Vegas, New Mexico.

So I'm very connected still to the land and to my family there, um, despite the fact that we moved to Northern California. So my dad, after finishing the Navy, could get a job at, uh, C& H Sugar Refinery. So my dad did factory work, and my mom didn't work at first because she was raising my sister and I, and she had, um, thyroid cancer at an early age.

So, my family struggled a lot in the beginning financially, like a lot of families do, uh, who are poor. So writing was very foreign to me. I liked to read as a kid. Reading was just a wonderful, wonderful escape. And I was enthralled with books. So, I was always in the libraries, always at the bookmobile, always, you know, dashing out.

My mom let my sister and I walk from our little house all the way across our town just to go to the library as little kids. So, I kind of put that in my first novel, that's What Night Brings, and, um, the two girls go to the library a lot, and that, that actually happens a great deal.

 And, um, I always wished that I could write, and I had friends who could write better than me in high school, and, um, I just seemed to have a mental block about being able to write, and I wished that I could be better, and, and I just wanted to write a good essay. But I got accepted to UC Davis, and had a breakthrough with a graduate student, a woman in a woman's studies class, women's history.

Um, she was the TA. And, um, she just pulled me and I went to her lab. She goes, "let's, let's talk about your writing." And then it was just this breakthrough. And after that, I was just so happy and I took more writing classes.

And, when I went to graduate school in Wisconsin, I majored in educational psychology, Madison, Wisconsin, and I got a master's degree and a PhD in educational psychology. And while I was in the PhD program, I went to a conference, an international women of color conference in Indiana.

Now I'm by myself in the Midwest, I'm far away from any family, and Madison, Wisconsin, was a very white campus. So the thought of going, and meeting other women of color at this conference was just a great, uh, a great pull for me to just get in my little car and just drive there. And I did, and I was so happy I did because I met Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa at a presentation.

And I also got to hear Ntozake Shange read poetry like I never read before. And she was the author you probably know of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. When I heard her read, I was enthralled. I was, I was like, oh my god. And uh, so Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa were giving a co presentation and I went up to them after to thank them for editing This Bridge Called My Back.

And that book really inspired me in a variety of ways and inspired me to be strong, speak up. I already was a pretty outgoing person, but I just thanked them both. They were sitting next to each other at the end of their talk and I said, thank you so much for, for editing this very important anthology. It means a lot to me. 

So they started asking me questions. They said, "Well, who are you? What do you do?" And I told them I was in grad school and they said, "you need to write." And I said, "I'm just kind of trying to finish this PhD." "No, no, no. You need to write. Your voice is important." And I said, "well, you know, uh, okay."

So they inspired me. And at the same time at lunch, we all, the Latina lesbians that were at the conference, there were 11 of us. It was the first time there were 11 Latina lesbians in one place that I, ever recall. And we were, um, very happy to talk to each other. And, and, uh, I met Juanita Diaz and, um, she says, "well, I'm editing, uh, an anthology called Compañeras. You want to contribute?" And I said, "sure." Um, so I wrote something for it, but I used a, um, pseudonym because I was worried my family would get ahold of that book and would be upset with what I wrote, you know, and number two, that I was in a Latina lesbian anthology.

So I used the pseudonym Martha and, um, but it was silly because I tell this story to students. Um, my family never read anything and, uh, I didn't have to worry. So I was like, am I crazy? You know, I don't come from a family of readers. I was the only nerd in the family. So after that, anything else I wrote or published, I used my name. But I was inspired by Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Juanita Diaz, who used also a pseudonym, Juanita Ramos. So, uh, when I read the anthology, and I was very happy, I just wanted more work on Chicana lesbians, and that's when I decided to ask Norma Alarcón at Berkeley if maybe her press would be interested in producing an anthology on Chicana lesbians.

So that's sort of like how I kind of grew into writing. 

Meagan Solomon: Thank you so much for sharing your personal trajectory from youth to ultimately completing your PhD and getting into the world of writing and publishing. How beautiful that you ended up in the right place at the right time.

Carla Trujillo: Yeah. 

Meagan Solomon: To meet Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. 

Carla Trujillo: It was wonderful. 

Meagan Solomon: I know so many people in the community name them as important figures. And I find it special that they were able to inspire and encourage others to also speak up as you mentioned, and to see their voices as worthy and as expert and as important. 

And I also want to validate the real fear that you described initially. I know that a lot of writers in Compañeras and even in Chicana Lesbians used pseudonyms because of the real fear of what could happen if their family or others in the community knew.

 So I'd love to talk more about the Chicana Lesbians anthology, which was published in 1991. Can you speak more about your inspiration and process editing the anthology and how it came to be?

Carla Trujillo: So I was working at UC Berkeley in Chicano Studies. That was my first job after finishing grad school and, um, my first professional job. And Norma Alarcón had gotten hired as a professor and had done some journal publications with her press, which was called Third Woman Press.

And I got involved with MALCS, Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. And I went to this conf, the conference that year was at Davis, UC Davis. Norma was there. Cherríe was there. There were quite a few people there. It was a pretty well attended conference. And I told Norma, I said, you know, "Norma, I, I just would like to see more writing by Chicana lesbians. I, I just feel like our voices need to be heard more. I'd like to see something, another, another book done, another anthology. And can you do that?" And she said, just looked at me and said, "Okay. Well, yeah, Third Woman Press would be happy to do something like that. Why don't you and Cherríe co edit it?"

And Cherríe is in the room. We were on a lunch break or something. And, uh, I said, "Well, Norma, I don't know anything about editing anthologies." She says, "You can do it." And I said, "okay, all right, sure. I'm willing to try." And so I went up to Cherríe and I said, "Cherríe, you want to do this with me?" And, um, I explained to her what I wanted to do and that Norma would publish it.

And she says, "oh, I'm busy." She's writing a play. "I can't do that right now. Why don't you just go ahead and I'll help spread the word for you." 

Back then, there was no internet. It was right on the cusp of the internet. Um, and email. So we used flyers. And, those guys traveled a lot. Cherríe, Norma, Gloria Anzaldúa and Ana, they were traveling all over the country. So they took some flyers for me, and then I just did whatever I could on campus and mailed it out to people I knew.

But basically those women got the word out for me. And I started getting, um, contributors and it was fun. Most of whom I did not know. And then I started working on it. I worked full time at Cal and so I'd come home, eat something quick for dinner, and then just work till I got too tired and stayed up late.

I did this for months and months reading. And it took, uh, I'd say, probably, I don't remember anymore because it was a long time ago, over 30 years ago. So, approximately a little over a year to get everything done and organized. And it was a little scary when it came out, but I had been inspired by This Bridge Called My Back and by Compañeras, and I felt there's like a cadre of us that, you know, are co supporting each other through these creative endeavors of being out lesbians.

Meagan Solomon: Wasn't there also some controversy about the cover? I love the cover with Ester Hernández's piece with La Virgen. I love that art piece so much. Could you also speak a little bit on that? Because it had multiple covers, didn't it?

Carla Trujillo: It has had two covers. The first one was Ester Hernández. I saw that cover and I bought that piece and, I said, "Norma, don't you think this would be a great cover?"

And she goes, "yeah, that would be." So, we decided to put that on the cover and I thought it was perfect. And Ester Hernández, unfortunately, got a lot of negative reception from lots of people. They harassed her for using that cover for my book, and she made a living as an artist, and so she, you know, lost commissions.

She basically lost a lot of work. A lot of her income. People were harassing her by calling her phone and, you know, calling the phone and then hanging up over and over and over. So basically, you know, she says, "I'm, I'm really sorry, but, if you do any subsequent reprints, can you find another cover? I mean, I, I feel bad telling you this, but I, I have to make a living, and I can't deal with this kind of harassment from the community." And Norma and I reluctantly said yes, and then for the next reprint, Norma found a, uh, art piece by Yan María Castro. Um, which is the last cover, cover we, we had.

So yeah, that was, that was unfortunate. And I also got harassed from time to time. I went across the country and gave talks. People invited me to do various talks about the anthology and about Chicana lesbians in particular. And, mostly I got positive reception, but sometimes people confronted me about using La Virgen de Guadalupe on the cover.

And so when I talked about this, um, I remember giving a lecture, a guest lecture at San Francisco State. And this young woman in the class, she said, "well, why are people giving you such a hard time about using La Virgen de Guadalupe on your cover? Doesn't she belong to everybody?" And I said, "yeah, she does."

She doesn't just belong to straight people who want to use her in the historical way that they have and well she's my virgin too, you know, is what this young woman was saying and it really, you know, kind of broke my heart because she was just so appalled that people would try to take ownership over an icon, which is ridiculous.

Meagan Solomon: Yeah, both covers are beautiful, but definitely the original cover, I think, embodied a lot of what the work inside of the anthology was grappling with, wanting to maintain that reverence and respect for cultural elements, like La Virgen and other icons and traditions, while also honoring our lesbian identities and, and to fuse worlds that had for so long been perceived as, you know, opposing.

So it was a really beautiful and powerful entrance into the anthology to have that on the cover. 

Carla Trujillo: I'm also certain that, you know, there was a lot of discrimination and homophobia. I mean, there is now still, of course, you know, that goes without saying, but I know that I didn't get certain jobs or certain promotions on campus or off campus. You know, certain opportunities, because of editing that, that anthology. And I, I have other publications, but I refuse to be in the closet about editing that anthology. So it was just a choice I made. I said, well, I have a job and I don't think they're going to fire me for being an out lesbian.

So I'll just keep this job and, and keep working. 

Meagan Solomon: Yeah, I think a lot of people now don't realize how pervasive homophobia still was in the 90s even. I think there's maybe in the public imaginary this notion that everything at that time was on an upward trajectory in terms of progressiveness surrounding acceptance of lesbianism and queerness more broadly, but your experiences speak to the fact that no, there was still a lot of tension and conflict, which is why those of us today are so grateful for the publication of the anthology during the time and for the predecessors that inspired you to edit the anthology because it still has resonance today because as you just said, we are still fighting the same fight. 

Carla Trujillo: Yeah. 

Meagan Solomon: All these years later. Thankfully we've made a lot of strides, but ultimately we have a long way to go.

Carla Trujillo: You know, Cherríe Moraga used to work at, at Cal before she went to Stanford and then ultimately Santa Barbara, but she and I worked at Cal a long time together. I can't remember how many years she did, but she and I co started a support kind of group for, for lack of a better word, for Chicano/ Chicana, Latino/ Latina students on the Cal campus. So we decided to do that together and we'd meet on campus. We've got a room and advertise it. Um, and students would show up. They were so afraid they were so some of them weren't, of course, and some were just really, really afraid to even walk in the room because that meant that they had to admit something about themselves and they were just afraid of people finding out.

It was extreme fear. And a lot of people were in the closet, you know, who were academicians or grad students and that sort of thing, which is understandable, but I remember I was giving a presentation after Chicana Lesbians came out and during the Q&A after, this guy asked me, "well, um, how many Chicana lesbians do you think exist in the United States?"

And I just started laughing. And I said, um, "which ones? The ones who are out or in the closet?" And so that made people laugh even more because of course no one knows that answer. 

Meagan Solomon: But definitely more than you think, probably. 

Carla Trujillo: Yeah, that's what I said. 

Meagan Solomon: Yeah, and as we just discussed, I think claiming Chicana lesbianism so publicly at the time was a radical act of resistance and reclamation, both to just larger society and specifically dominant Chicano society, which has for so long been very heteropatriarchal, which so many pieces in the anthology speak to.

I'm curious, what you make of claiming Chicana lesbianism now. Knowing that, you know, in the 2000s especially, I think the term "queer" started to become more popularized, and I think has historically been associated with being more radical of an orientation.

But what I've noticed is a reclamation, revival, or even just a continuance of maintaining the radical orientation of "lesbian" as well. So I'm curious what you make of that discussion and what you make of the power of the term "Chicana lesbian" now. 

Carla Trujillo: I think "Chicana lesbian" is still very relevant now. And it continues to rally people to embrace who they are. And I really don't know because I have been out of the loop. Mostly I was realizing this morning, like, pretty much what I do is I write, and I, mostly I write, and I do art, and I'm retired, so I, I can't speak for what's going on with how people are feeling about identity, but I think the fluidity of identity, I embrace because I, I think it opens up one's capability to not use definitions if people don't want to, or use them if they do. And so it gives a lot more freedom, I think, to a lot of people. And I, I love that. Personally, I use the word "queer" a lot or "Chicana lesbian." I sort of interchange both of them . I think that people should be able to use any signifer they wish, and I think that this is still a relevant one for many, many people.

Meagan Solomon: Yeah, I totally agree. It's exciting to still have access to this language and to still feel its power and its subversiveness today.

So, after editing the Chicana Lesbians anthology, you wrote and published your first novel, What Night Brings, as you mentioned earlier. And for those who haven't read it yet, first of all, I hope you will after you listen to this episode. This is a really important novel. It focuses on a young Chicana's coming of age as a lesbian, and her grappling with that in the context of her Catholic upbringing, and the very patriarchal and abusive context of her family, and this only captures a bit of the novel, so you just have to read it to learn more about how the main character, Marci, navigates her coming of age as a young Chicana lesbian.

Um, so, could you share more about what brought you into the world of fiction following your work editing anthologies and specifically your experience writing and publishing What Night Brings? 

Carla Trujillo: I did want to try to learn to write fiction. I felt that graduate school was impacting my ability to write creatively.

And I felt like I had to write in the way that my professors wanted me to write in order to finish my graduate degrees, but at the same time I always loved fiction. I read it all through grad school, you know, I'd come home, work all day. I treated it like a job. Grad school was like a job. Work all day, started like at 7:30, 8 o'clock in the morning and take a lunch break. And then work till probably around 6 o'clock, come home. I was exhausted. I couldn't do any more. I had dinner and then I relaxed by reading. So reading was always like my way to decompress for the day. And, um, I wanted to write fiction. So, after Chicana Lesbians came out, I was, I can't remember now, I'm trying to remember, I took, oh, I took a class with Cherríe Moraga, she was teaching on campus, and, um, I was taking, I was trying whatever I could to try to learn, you know, workshops in the community, I live in Berkeley.

So I was lucky, I had the San Francisco Bay Area and could take workshops on writing and, and keep learning and, and reading and it, and it was just like sort of like a wonderful, wonderful time on campus. And, um, then I recall a flyer about a master's writing program that Sandra Cisneros was doing in San Antonio.

So I applied and I got accepted into the very first Macondo class. Um, and there were 10 of us and we were all women and like one man, I think. And, uh, it was, it was the first time ever. So we, we met at night and it was in July 19. 93? Um, 30 years ago, maybe 95. And it was the very first time I sat down, we were in a circle, Sandra introduced herself, she had her little dog next to her, Violeta, and we started working on people's pieces, and they were poets and fiction writers, and I had started writing What Night Brings.

My partner, who's now my wife, is a writer, and when she moved in with me, this is before I went to Macondo, she, she would say, you know, I need to work on my novel, and I'd say, okay, and I was writing essays, like I was editing, Living Chicana Theory, so I edited that anthology. And I was writing it. I was doing a lot of essay writing. I was also an editor for Outlook magazine, and I was doing essays for that. So I was writing a lot of personal essays, but I still wanted to write a novel. It was always something I wanted to learn to do. So when she moved in early in our relationship, she'd disappear for a few hours.

Three hours later, she'd come out. She goes, Okay, I'm ready to go do something else. I said, but you only work three hours, you're going to work eight hours or something like close to, I thought. She was, I'm just going to work like three or four, let's, let's go do something fun.

And I said, "now, wait a minute, you just put in three hours and you worked on a novel, right?" "Yeah." And I go, "well, why don't I try?" She goes, "go ahead. Yeah. Let's go for it." So I sat down with a blank computer screen and I started writing my story, which was two pages of autobiographical fiction, which was so boring.

 All I did is read books. That's exciting. So I, threw it away, and I go, I'm not going to do that. I decided that I gave myself permission to write whatever I wanted. And the first paragraph came to me instantly after that, of What Night Brings, and after that I just took off.

And I gave myself permission to write fiction, and have fun with it, and learn. Just learn how to write. And that's all What Night Brings was, was an exercise in learning how to write. I never ever thought it would get published, and I was lucky to get accepted to Macondo, I thought, and Sandra gave me feedback on the first 10 to 20 pages or something like that, and it was really good.

And for the first time in my life, Sandra Cisneros and the people in my class talked about my story, rather than my character being Mexican. It was like that they didn't even bother talking about could they understand the Spanish or could they, you know, relate to the working class, you know, life of a, of a Catholic girl who's come from a messed up family.

They, they just talked about the story, not about "the Mexican." And I do that in quotations in this story. 

Meagan Solomon: That's so powerful. And it's really special to know how connected all of these important figures are in the community, from you initially connecting with Anzaldúa and Moraga to eventually getting to work with Cisneros.

Carla Trujillo: Yeah, and I worked with her for six, the next six summers.

Meagan Solomon: That's so beautiful. And I think really speaks to the ethos of Chicana/ Latina feminisms. Even if you weren't organizing under that banner explicitly, you were activating that theory in the flesh in the way that you all supported one another.

It is just really cool and special to hear how everyone was so connected and supportive. And it's so amazing how you managed to get your PhD in educational psychology and also delve into the world of publishing in a completely different context, from personal essay writing to fiction eventually.

It's amazing how you were able to straddle so many different worlds academically and professionally and personally. 

Carla Trujillo: Yeah, it was fun. I was not a professor. My first job was a student advisor, so that freed me in, in a way, you know to focus on students in my job, which I loved. Um, and then also embrace writing, you know, in the evening.

So it was kind of fun. 

Meagan Solomon: Yeah, I love that. I love that it started out with just trying a new form of writing and exercising new skills, and then here we have What Night Brings, which has been such an important text.

Carla Trujillo: I did give myself permission, like I said, to write whatever I wanted, and, um, with the mindset I had while I was writing it was that it would never ever get published.

So it freed me from having to conform to any, anything because I go, this is just an exercise. I'm just learning to write. So I was surprised that it got published and pleased. 

Meagan Solomon: I feel like that's a good philosophy to have for anyone listening and wants to delve into writing is to allow yourself that freedom to just create versus maybe hyper fixating on where it might end up.

Carla Trujillo: Yeah. My second novel, um, I had a hard time. I got an agent for my second novel. But, um, it took a long, long time before I could get that published. And again, that was the same small press that did What Night Brings, except the publisher passed away. Um, he knew he was dying of emphysema.

And, um, so he connected with Northwestern University. to continue in publishing Curbstone Books. And um, but at the time when it came out a lot of people never even knew I had a second novel because the head of the editorial director, not my editor but the editorial director I don't think cared for my book.

It was, had too many lesbian, lesbians in it. It's set in Santa Fe and my protagonist was a Chicana curandera who kind of defied curandera tradition. She smoked, uh, cussed. And she cured people and she was really good. And so, and then my two secondary characters were a Chicana lesbian couple.

And I think he just didn't care for that. Didn't promote, didn't promote the novel. So, I think a lot of people don't even know I have another novel. 

Meagan Solomon: Do you want to speak more about it? For those who, who maybe don't know? Um, we can never have too many lesbians here. 

Carla Trujillo: Um, the title is Faith and Fat Chances.

And it's set in the poor section of Santa Fe. Okay. Um, and this young man who happens to be the brother of one of the Chicana lesbian protagonists wants to buy out people to start a winery. He's really into wine. And New Mexico has like this really amazing amount of wine growing there, and champagne, and, so, um, and so he was going to give them like a fair price, you know, for their land and it's on the outskirts and why not develop it?

You see this all the time all over California, all over our country. People just try to buy out poor people and use their land all the time. It's so common. And so I think, um, that this is the response was no, we don't want to sell. And they collectively had to um, fight, fight him off, and the mayor was corrupt, and it was just fun, I just made everything up, all the characters are just made up, nobody's based on family, and nobody's based on anyone, and because I went there all the time as a kid and as an adult, I just felt like I had the language, and I had, you know, a lot going on, and then the subplot was um, a lot of people had died of cancer when Oppenheimer and all those people were testing the nuclear development, uh, the bombs. 

Meagan Solomon: I really appreciate how you draw upon real life events and historical moments, that you situate your characters in those contexts, because it gives us, I think, an important avenue to be able to discuss it, especially from a lens where, for us as Chicana lesbians, can relate through the characters. And like I said, while, while that editor may not have appreciated all of the lesbians, I know that so many others do.

Carla Trujillo: Oh, good. 

Meagan Solomon: I knew you had a second novel but I haven't read it yet so I'm excited.

Carla Trujillo: Oh good, I hope you enjoy it. 

Meagan Solomon: To wrap up our conversation here, I'd love to, know if you're currently working on anything that you'd like to share or what you're looking forward to next, either professionally or personally. I know you said that you're retired. So anything that you're just looking forward to?

Carla Trujillo: Well, a couple things. One, I've been working on a new novel for quite a while now. This one is about a woman, a young straight woman from Mexico whose husband gets involved with a drug cartel and she has to escape very quickly to this country to run from them and start a new life without giving you details.

And so she starts a new life. She comes to LA, then she jumps to Oakland and then to Seattle. And learns English and tries to create a new, a new beginning with hardly anything and no family, no English, very, very, very little money. And she has to start cleaning houses, and then starts going to, to community college to take ESL classes and stuff.

 She was inspired by many of the students I worked with. Oh, wow. Yeah, so she's an amalgamation of all the stories. I've worked with so many undocumented students at Cal. And students who came here who just were undocumented or are documented and started new lives with just next to nothing and somehow graduated from Cal. I was inspired by these stories. And I just started writing this story. It just came out of me. And her best friend is a Latina, half Latina lesbian. She's mixed race. And I'm just having fun with that. 

 And then, drumroll, I, uh, have been, uh, reticent to do a sequel to What Night Brings. All these years, the students, I go to high schools, "Are you writing a sequel?" "No." "Have you thought about it?" "No." But then, I took a class with Cristina Garcia this summer at Macondo, and she's just a wonderful teacher. 

 So I am going to just jump into the sequel and see what happens. 

Meagan Solomon: Oh wow, that's so exciting. Both of those books sound so timely, so important. 

Carla Trujillo: Thank you. 

Meagan Solomon: Thank you so much for your time. It's been so wonderful to get to know you more. And I know that those listening are going to appreciate this conversation so much. 

Carla Trujillo: Thank you so much and I wish you the best with your project. 

Mariana Meriqui Rodrigues: Thank you for listening to Malflora Podcast. 

Alexandra Nichole Salazar: To stay connected, visit malflora.org or follow us on Instagram @malfloraco. 

Meagan Solomon: Until next time!