Latinx Comics Studies

FERNANDA DÍAZ-BASTERIS is an assistant professor of Latinx new media and ethnic studies at The Ohio State University. Her research and teaching seek to understand US Caribbean/Latinx cultural forms of resistance to displacement, coloniality, and racial capitalism through literature, popular art, and graphic narratives from the mid-20th to 21st centuries.   MAITE URCAREGUI is an assistant professor of Latinx literatures in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San José State University. Her research and teaching examine 20th and 21st century Latinx and multiethnic US literatures, visual cultures, and comics through feminist, queer, and critical race theories and histories.

Introduction
Latinx Comics Beyond Representation: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches
Fernanda Díaz-Basteris and Maite Urcaregui
Part I: Complicating National Histories and Cultural Identities
Chapter 1: Reimagining Indigenous Women’s History in Pre-Contact Mesoamerica via Daniel Parada’s Zotz: Serpent and Shield by Jessica Rutherford
Chapter 2: Filling the Holes of Cuban Memory: Remembering the Revolution and Exile in the Comics Classroom by Stephanie Contreras
Chapter 3: Pedagogical Strategies for Teaching the Comic Anthology Puerto Rico Strong in the Latinx Literature Classroom by Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado
Comic: “Nationalism in the Puerto Rican Context” by Nicky Rodriguez
Part II: Latinx Migrations: Borders and Borderlands
Chapter 4: The Fence and the Grid: Reading the US-Mexico Border Fence as an Infrastructure for Latinx Comics by Marcel Brousseau and Katherine Kelp- Stebbins
Chapter 5: El Peso Hero: Comic Book Protagonists of the (Un)Documented Latinx Experience by Kaitlin E. Thomas and Héctor Rodriguez III
Chapter 6: The Missing Latinx: Updated Scenes of California Noir in the Unveiling of an American Nightmare by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste
Comic: I’m American, and I’m Multilingual. Why Does it Feel so Scary to Speak in Another Language in Public? by Terry Blas
Part III: Feminist and Queer Interventions
Chapter 7: From Conditional Belonging to Self-Definition: The Hija Loquita Breaks Free in Blackbird by Katlin Marisol Sweeney-Romero
Chapter 8: "It’s on every single page": Character Development in Latinx Comics for Youth…239 by Nicole Ann Amato
Chapter 9: Translating Queer Afro-Latinx Experiences through Comics Aesthetics in Breena Nuñez’s Autobiographical Comics by Maite Urcaregui
Comic: Short Comic. “This Body Is Actually Unsettled” by Breena Nuñez.
Part IV: Practices of Placemaking
Chapter 10: Caribbean Urban Belonging: Teaching Paradoxes of Citizenship with Independent Puerto Rican Comics by Fernanda Díaz-Basteris
Chapter 11: United States of Bananas: A Graphic Novel as Decluttering and Decolonizing Doubled Journey of the Self by Frederick Luis Aldama
Chapter 12: Through the GoogleGland: Virtual Reality and Hijacked Futures in Inés Estrada’s Alienation by Lars Allen
Short Comic: “Prelude” by Conrado Parraguirre.
Coda
Drawing Inferences and Reading the Frames of Latinx Media by Jennifer Gómez-Menjivar
Notes on Contributors
Index