Q&A: Frederick Luis Aldama and Angela M. Sánchez Explore Latine Food and Sports through Comics

The comics anthology was published in August of 2025.

Artwork by Hector Garza

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Frederick Luis Aldama and Angela M. Sánchez over email about the comics anthology that they edited: From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides. The Ohio State University Press describes it as “full of humor and heart [emphasis theirs], writers and artists from across the US pay tribute to the ways food and sports endure as touchstones in the Latin American diaspora.”

Read on to learn more about this exciting project.

1. How did this anthology come about? What was the process like to choose to explore food and sports?

FEDE: This anthology crystallized from an urgent recognition: mainstream media systematically flattens the kaleidoscopic complexity of Latinx communities—Mexican, Hispanophone Caribbean, Central and South American, hemispheric ancestrally connected peoples—into reductive stereotypes. Angela and I saw how food and sports transcend mere rituals and traditions to become embodied practices where Latinx cultures, histories, and identities are actively forged, preserved, transmitted—and radically transformed. These aren’t passive cultural artifacts but living, breathing spaces—around kitchen tables where memory marinates, in lucha libre ringsides where myth blends with sweat and tears.

The pairing of food and sports emerged organically, recognizing how both domains activate our complete sensorial apparatus—mind, body, creativity, intellect, emotion. They constitute the connective tissue threading through family gatherings and community celebrations, saturating every memory with flavor and movement. From the transgenerational power encoded in a family recipe to the collective effervescence of a fútbol match, these spaces reveal culture in its full, pulsating complexity. While this anthology extends my broader Latinographix series vision, it pushes beyond conventional boundaries—simultaneously functioning as archive, altar, and fiesta.

ANGELA: Food and sports struck Fede and me as expressions of culture of which many people have their earliest visceral memories. Food triggers powerful memories tied to the senses, especially taste and smell. Sports evoke big emotions; our first wins, our biggest losses, what it felt like being picked last, our team loyalties and fan fervor. Together, food and sports pack a powerful punch of nostalgia and accessibility for any reader.

On the flip side, food and sports are also some of the most superficial ways that people outside of a culture first engage with it. Whether it’s at a restaurant or learning about a popular team, food and sports are things that often times invite outsiders to partake an learn about a culture(s). While From Cocinas is created by and primarily intended for Latinx readers, it is not exclusively for Latinx readers. Our hope is that non-Latinx people who are curious about the cultures underneath this massive, unwieldy pan-ethnic term are able to find an entry point and begin to understand the diversity of experiences, stories, foods, sports, and people that make up “Latinx/e/a/o.”

2. How were the contributors chosen to participate in the anthology?

FEDE: Our curatorial process deliberately assembled over 40 creators spanning the entire Latinx diaspora, showcasing the prismatic complexity of our lived experiences. Authenticity emerged through inviting creators whose narratives spring from embodied knowledge. Certain voices revealed themselves as essential from inception—Andrés Vera Martínez’s “Lamesa” became indispensable, powerfully articulating cultural shame and resilience through his father’s public humiliation for eating tacos in a 1950s Anglo-dominated lunchroom.

Selection centered on identifying creators who could harness the visual-verbal synergy of comics to alchemize both quotidian and mythological moments into emotionally resonant narratives capturing our vast spectrum of genders, ethnoracialities, sexualities, and class positions. We sought stories oscillating between intimate domesticity—the ritual of making menudo—and spectacular performance—lucha libre’s performative violence—including honest admissions of cultural disconnection, like not knowing how to make churros. Above all, we committed to honoring the full amplitude of experiences that simultaneously reveal shared threads and vital, gorgeous differences across our distinct Latinx ancestrally anchored cultures and communities.

ANGELA: Fede definitely took lead on this, drawing from the roster of artists he had worked with in his previous comics anthology, Tales from la Vida. I also outreached to artists from a community organization I volunteer with, LatinX in Animation (LXiA). Based in Los Angeles, LXiA provides resources, support, and advocacy for established and emerging Latinx professionals in the animation, VFX, and video game industries. Some of the contributors from LXiA include Jazmin Puente (“I Dislike Soccer”) and Rosie Murillo (“Caldo de Pollo”).

3. There are many ways to tell stories. Why were comics the medium chosen for this anthology?

FEDE: Comics perfectly mirror the cognitive architecture of memory and identity formation—visual, non-linear, multisensorial. For Latinx creators and readers, the medium collapses temporal and spatial boundaries. A single panel depicting an abuelita kneading masa simultaneously exists in the immediate present and ancestral time. This visual-verbal synthesis replicates how memory actually functions—through fragments, images, sensory impressions.

The medium enables creators to code-switch visually, hybridize aesthetic traditions, and spatialize affect—ideal for articulating diasporic, palimpsestic identities. Comics capture embodied knowledge—an abuela’s hands shaping tortillas, the kinetic electricity of a packed estadio—with an immediacy pure text cannot achieve. The format’s multigenerational accessibility means pre-literate children can decode the love embedded in an abuelo’s cooking gestures, while elders navigating English can recognize their own histories in visual narratives.

ANGELA: I’m a big believer in visual storytelling. Sometimes seeing the representation hits harder than strictly words on a page. Your brain is connecting the two as the author SPECIFICALLY wants you to envision it. And when we hear and see a story, when it fully comes to life for us, we can empathize with that narrative, creator, and community. Because of this visual aspect, kids who normally don’t get to see themselves in visual media (i.e. Latinxs in comics) now have a chance for a variety of stylizations (chibi-style like Eliamaría Madrid’s “Churros” comic or semi-realism with a dash of fantasy in “Mi Desayuno Favorito” by Diana Vargas Sampieri). It’s why I build the representation of marginalized stories into my own projects – like my own comics, picture books, and novels – or projects that I’m contracted on for clients like Disney or Nickelodeon. At a time when we’re seeing attacks on the very lives and voices of the Latinx community in the US, this project felt like a necessary addition to accessible literature and making ourselves and our stories visible.

Comics are also great for reluctant readers of all backgrounds; the visual cues in the comics help signal the intention of the text.

4. What was the process like to choose to explore food and sports?

FEDE: Let me expand on our editorial methodology. Our collaboration was grounded in shared vision yet enriched by complementary expertise. Angela’s deep engagement with children’s literature and animation ensured accessibility without sacrificing emotional complexity, while I contributed extensive knowledge of Latinx comics genealogies and visual storytelling techniques. We encouraged creators to take aesthetic risks while maintaining cultural rootedness.

Our curation intentionally reflected the full spectrum of Latinx experience. Food transcends mere sustenance—it’s how we claim territorial and psychic space, preserve collective memory, and resist cultural erasure—what’s called, culturecide. When dominant culture dismisses our cuisines except when commodified and sanitized à la Taco Bell, every handmade tortilla becomes insurgent praxis. Similarly, sports generate collective identity and provide perfect metaphorical scaffolding: Latinx quotidian existence demands equivalent struggle, perseverance, collaborative spirit, and the capacity to lose with dignity and triumph with humility.

ANGELA: I think Fede said it best here.

5. What would you like readers to take away from the stories in the anthology?

FEDE: We envision readers—both Latinx and non-Latinx—emerging feeling witnessed, emotionally moved, and perhaps gastronomically inspired. That they’ll excavate their own familial rituals, sports allegiances, and culinary debates. I want intergenerational reading experiences generating “Remember when...?” conversations. I want emerging artists recognizing themselves and thinking “My story deserves telling too.”

Most crucially, readers should perceive Latinx identity not as monolithic narrative but as vibrant, stratified mosaic resisting reduction. We’re disrupting the stereotype constraining Latinx stories to trauma narratives or immigration tales exclusively. This anthology creates space for joy, humor, complexity, and genre multiplicity—from punk zine aesthetics to historical collage, from kitchen-table realism to sports-infused retro- and sci-fi fantasy.

ANGELA: I want readers to take away the universality of these stories. “Cocinando” by David and Charlene Bowles is a comic on making chile rellenos with one’s mom hits home. Quarrelling with a parent who’s just trying to teach you, but you’re struggling? Real. It reminded me of me and my dad when he would show me how to cook. How relatable is it to undertake a schoolyard dare like in Frederick Luis Aldama’s “The Great Chile Standoff”? As much as each of the stories in this anthology offer a little glimpse into a specific moment or culture, they also each have a universally accessible core of humanity. My hope is that every reader can connect with that.

6. Do you have any recommendations for folks looking to tell their own stories?

FEDE: First, recognize that quotidian experiences—those kitchen table conversations, pickup basketball games, first attempts at recreating ancestral recipes—carry profound cultural weight. You don’t need institutional permission to narrate these stories. Comics remains particularly democratic; expensive equipment isn’t required, just paper and writing tools to begin.

Actively support the Latinx indie comics ecosystem. Buy books, absolutely—but also request titles at your libraries, amplify creators on social media, attend conventions and indie fests. Support crowdfunding campaigns, follow creators, publicly champion their work. Latinx comics flourish through community—become integral to that community.

Remember: authenticity doesn’t demand stories exclusively about struggle or trauma. Render full humanity—joy, humor, complexity. Deploy comics’ visual vocabulary to code-switch, collapse temporal boundaries between past and present, demonstrate how food memories and sports experiences shape identity through non-linear trajectories. Your specific narrative, told with radical honesty, will resonate across Latinx communities.

Le va a llegar al alma y mente de everyone—todos, all of us.

ANGELA: Made is better than not made at all! Oftentimes, people obsess over their story being good enough or looking a certain way. Heads up, everybody’s gonna die at some point. Do you want your story out there or not? It’s ok to try different pathways (e.g. self-publishing vs traditional vs posting online). It’s ok to take your time, but to the goal is to make progress and tell that story.

Also, tell your own stories with integrity. Don’t use AI. Partner with an actual human artist if you want to tell a story in a specific visual style. AI only serves to plagiarize from existing artists’ work. Art itself is an expression of human creativity. If you offload that expression to a bot, it’s no longer art.