Karen Roybal

Assistant Professor of Southwest Studies, Colorado College

Karen R. Roybal is an assistant professor of Southwest Studies at Colorado College. She is the author of
Archives of Dispossession: Recovering the Testimonios of Mexican American Herederas, 1848–1960. Her latest project, Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo, co-edited with Bernadine Hernández, is forthcoming in spring 2021.

Photo of a woman standing in front of a white wall on which hangs several brightly colored images of the Virgin Mary, artist Frida Khalo, an ornate turquoise cross, another image of the Virgin Mary in a bright turquoise frame, and a macrame wall hanging made of crimson red yarns. The woman is dressed in a black dress and has long black hair with subtle stipes of gray on the top of her head.
Karen Roybal

Written by Karen Roybal

  • Photo of a young woman with long hair. One half of her face is painted as a white skull, with decorative thin black scrolls on her right cheek and a large black circle around her right eye. The eye circle is lined with gold sequins. She also has four thin black vertical lines across her lips on the right side of her mouth.

    A Pivotal—and Long Overdue—Moment for Change

    What happened in 2020 was not unprecedented. Rather, it was a stark reminder that racism and classism had for too long gone unresolved. It was a time for action. The youth of 2020 went on to become the chroniclers of their era—and the leaders of the effort to redress the inequities the pandemic had exposed.