Puro Pinche True Fictions: Prose and Comics. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Puro Pinche True Fictions: Prose and Comics

"Puro Pinche True Fictions" collects short stories and comics, mostly set in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas/Mexico border. The stories reflect the author's upbringing in this region as a second-generation Mexican-American, at times fusing folk beliefs with Bradbury-style science fiction. For example, "Tamales" sets the immigration narrative on Mars in 2063, when a migrant family makes the crossing in search of work via (malfunctioning) rocket. Other stories, like "Genoveva" and "Where You Stop the Story," retell painful family episodes going back years and generations. The comics section, "Electric Youth," is the most explicitly autobiographical, recounting incidents from Alaniz's childhood in South Texas, some of them told in Spanglish. These range from nostalgic (like one showing how common and pleasant it used to be to cross the river to Reynosa, Mexico for family outings) to funny/gross (the author's memory of stepping on a nail) to self-flagellating (the reimagining of ethnic self-loathing through a Star Wars metaphor). This collection will appeal to readers with an interest in contemporary Chicano fiction and comics.

José Alaniz, a native of Edinburg, Texas, is a professor at the University of Washington specializing in Slavic languages, literatures, cinema, media, and comics studies. A celebrated author of fiction and comics, his recent works include Puro Pinche True Fictions (2023, FlowerSong Press), The Phantom Zone and Other Stories (2020, Amatl Comix), and The Compleat Moscow Calling (2023, Amatl).