Natalia Molina

Natalia is the author of three award-winning books, How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts and Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940, as well as co-editor of Relational Formations of Race: Theory, Method and Practice. Her most recent book is A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community. It was a finalist for a James Beard Award and received 14 awards and honorable mentions from various organizations. The book chronicles the lives of immigrant workers, including Molina’s grandmother, who became placemakers, nurturing and feeding their communities at restaurants that served as urban anchors. Her research explores the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship.

Natalia is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, and her work has been supported by various organizations including the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford, Mellon and Rockefeller Foundation. A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and an elected member of the Society of American Historians, she has given lectures in Latin America, Asia, Europe, as well as over 30 of the 50 United States. In 2018, she was the Organization of American Historians China Residency scholar.

An accomplished speaker and certified mediator, she enjoys opportunities for intellectual and cultural exchange, whether in the classroom, lecture hall, or over a restaurant table. Molina is currently working on a new book, The Silent Hands that Shaped the Huntington Library: A History of Its Immigrant Workers, and was recently featured in the three-part documentary series VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos.