[4] In 1994, she was one of six founding faculty members of the then César Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano Studies at University of California, Los Angeles.

Gaspar de Alba served as chair of that department from 2007 to 2010 and worked to approve and implement the second Ph.D. program in Chicana/o Studies at UCLA.

[5] This novel is based on the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, around which Gaspar de Alba researched and organized a conference.

[6] The mystery is based on the unresolved murders of over five-hundred Mexican women and girls along the border in El Paso, Texas, the region where Gaspar de Alba is originally from.

Another character in the novel, Ivon, a lesbian professor in Los Angeles who was supposed to adopt the baby, becomes outraged at the growing violence against women at the border.