Laboratory of Deficiency

"Lira's multilayered research and analysis provide a powerful model for understanding and challenging the reproductive coercion of Mexican-origin youth in California state institutions and beyond."—Elena R. Gutiérrez, author of Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-origin Women's Reproduction

"Highlights the devastating and disproportionate impact of the racialization, sexualization, and medicalization of Mexican-origin women in the early twentieth century."—Miroslava Chávez-García, Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara

"Brilliantly conceived, researched, and organized."—John Mckiernan-Gonzalez, Director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest, Texas State University

"This brilliant account of Mexican-origin youth incarcerated as 'feebleminded' in California’s Pacific Colony reveals the importance of disability consignment and institutional confinement in histories of reproductive oppression—and of resistance. We still live in a laboratory of deficiency. This book is an urgently needed guide to shutting that lab down."—Susan Schweik, author of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public