Content area
Full Text
Aldama, Frederick Luis. Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Ariola to Los Bros Hernandez. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2009. viii + 331 pages. Paper, $24.95.
Your Brain on Latino Comics is a valuable introduction to the analysis of comics, with a focus on those created by Latino writers and oriented toward both a Latino and non-Latino audiece. The book is divided into three distinct sections. The first part provides an overview of Latino comics and of the scholarship that has addressed them to date. The second part discusses analytical strategies for comics as a whole, using Latino examples. The last part is a collection of twenty-one interviews of Latino comic artists conducted by the author. These interviews constitute the book's most relevant contribution to the scholarship on Latino comics.
The artist or author interview is at the core of social sciences and humanities research, yet Aldama's initiative to publish such a large collection of statements suggests that the real-life experiences of comic book authors has not been a priority in previous studies on the topic. In fact, his literature review indicates that scholars have typically focused on the politics of representation of Latinos in comics (by Latino writers or otherwise), and on the hypothetical experiences of Latino readers. These interviews are bound to prompt a new set of questions...
