Never too late for good Summer reading

Latino Superheroes

...No, not another post about Edward James Olmos or Sotomayor

Finally got a little bit of time to catch up on my summer reading in my fortress of solitude, and I'm really enjoying Frederick Luis Aldama's Your Brain on Latino Comics.

There are a couple great lines that reminded me of the South Park & Dave Chappelle posts regarding the ethical responsibility of readers (which I couldn't help but post).

Try as we may to lead students to conclusions about representations with consciousness of social justice:
"[T]he reader's range of experience can lead him or her in any direction" (28).
What is it that readers/viewers find lacking in Latino characters that their 'careers' are often short lived?


Aldama also accounts for the cognitive dissonance experienced when watching this kind of material; the misreadings of satirical material "show how racism can prevent a reader from recognizing a narrative blueprint that uses devices and signposts to satirize contemporary society as well as to poke fun at identity politics generally" (29).


Believe it amigo...

My Brain on Latino Comics

Latino Culture + Comics=Summer Reading

Frederick Luis Aldama's new book Your Brain on Latino Comics looks like just the thing for wanting to learn a bit about the culture of Latino comics with interviews with the authors of the comics as well.

 
If I wasn't already sold on the concept, then Aldama's words in an interview with the OSU newspaper hooked me:
"The book not only tells you the story about Latinos in comic books," Aldama said, "it tells you something as foundational as how we can imagine other places, how we can feel, or be emotionally moved by, something that is not in our present tense experience."