Alumni Profile: Yared “Yayo” Avalos , Hereford, Texas

Inspired by life in the Texas panhandle, student research explores themes of migration, labor, family, and belonging 

Yared “Yayo” Avalos, '25, documented the experiences of working families, immigrants and marginalized communities in a collection of short stories.

By Armando Quezada

The Bill Lane Center is committed to expanding who gets to tell the story of the American West. By funding projects that emerge from students’ lived experiences, the Center creates space for new narratives and new forms of knowledge to emerge. Latino students, queer students, first-generation students, and students from border communities are able to bring perspectives that challenge conventional understandings of the region while enriching scholarly and public conversations. What emerges from this work is a more nuanced portrait of communities whose lives unfold between cultural categories and economic realities.

...stories can surface truths that numbers or policy reports cannot: the quiet costs of migration, the resilience of families under strain, and the contradictions of a region celebrated in myth but struggling with modern realities.

Storytelling the New West

Public policy and Iberian and Latin American Cultures (ILAC) major Yared “Yayo” Avalos applied for a Bill Lane Center research assistantship for the summer of 2025, hoping to create a collection of short stories inspired by his own life, growing up in the Texas panhandle. Avalos's final project, Ghost Towns: Stories From the New West, documents the experiences of working families, immigrants, and the marginalized, foregrounding the resilience and complexity of communities often absent from mainstream narratives about the American West. By focusing on everyday lives, Avalos's creative writing offers a portrait of a region shaped by cultural change, economic uncertainty, and geographic isolation.

Mentored by Lisa Surwillo, professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Avalos tried to paint a picture of rural communities that data and quantitative analysis cannot capture. “By fictionalizing lived experiences, I’ve found that stories can surface truths that numbers or policy reports cannot: the quiet costs of migration, the resilience of families under strain, and the contradictions of a region celebrated in myth but struggling with modern realities,” Avalos said. “These findings suggest that literature can play a vital role in preserving memory and opening new ways to understand communities.”

For more information about BLC-sponsored research opportunities, including self-designed projects like Avalos', visit the the Lane Center student research page.