In a 2013 interview, Gutiérrez y Muhs mentioned that she grew up in Mexico and was named after the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
[5] She is a well-known scholar in the fields of Chicana and Latin American literature, cultural studies, and feminist theory.
After being tenured in March 2006, Gutiérrez y Muhs was named the 2007-2009 Wismer Professor for Gender and Diversity Studies at Seattle University.
[6] In 2011, she represented the United States at the Kritya International Poetry Festival held in Nagpur, India, along with two other American poets.
She gained attention for her work as First Editor of the 2012 book Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia[7] which discussed the experiences of various women of color in academia and later for her 2013 book Rebozos de Palabras: an Helena Maria Viramontes critical reader, on the contributions of Helena Maria Viramontes.