When Elizabeth Cummins Muñoz had her eldest child, in 2000, she started spending a lot of time at the playground. There were plenty of other kids at this playground, in Houston, where Muñoz lived, but many of them weren't there with their parents. They were there with their nannies.
Muñoz got talking to those nannies – about their lives, their jobs, and how they ended up in Texas. They were all women, and most, immigrants. Those conversations formed the early basis for Muñoz's new book Mothercoin: The Stories of Immigrant Nannies. The book, which came out this month, is the result of more than a decade spent interviewing Mexican and Central American women who came to Houston to be care workers in private homes. Coming to Texas, many of those women were forced to leave their own families – their own children – behind.
