How do the stories that we tell shape people’s lived realities? This is the question at the heart of my research and teaching. My academic training in Latin American literary and cultural studies and my experience teaching Spanish and translation have shown me that language is a powerful tool. This is why my research and teaching use sources like literature, film, TV, and newspapers to understand how language and culture shape how people relate to each other and to their environments. Specifically, I am interested in how the stories that people tell about drugs have influenced real-world issues like racism and climate change. I am currently writing a book that examines these questions in the context of 20th- and 21st-century Latin America. While I am personally interested in the effects of how people talk about drugs, my goal as a teacher is to help students identify issues that interest them and to give them tools to better understand how those issues have been shaped by language and culture. My research has taken me to libraries and archives in Mexico and Colombia and I love talking with students about the different places that their academic interests can take them.