Using narrative descriptions of the author's own lived-experience of her ethnic heritage, Martinez offers a systematic interrogation of the social and cultural norms by which certain aspects of her Mexican-American cultural heritage are both retained and lost over generations of assimilation. Combining semiotic and existential phenomenology with Chicana feminism, the author charts new terrain where anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic work may be pursued.

"Jacqueline Martinez's book deepens our understanding of how transformation and liberation are (and, can be) achieved at the level of individual consciousness. An important contribution to the field of communication—a privileging of Chicana feminist scholarship and what it has to offer to communication scholars' theoretical and methodological endeavors." - Review of Communication