From Cocinas to Lucha Libre: A Conversation on Food, Sports, and Latinx Comics

Frederick Luis Aldama & Angela M. Sánchez's Co-edited From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides (Mad Creek Books, 2025)

The new comics anthology, From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides, co-edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Angela M. Sánchez, has already garnered critical acclaim. Publishers Weekly calls it "a joyful mosaic of diverse comics storytelling," while Kirkus notes how "the authors and illustrators run with the inspiration provided by food and sports, exploring the nuances of diaspora culture and belonging through the lens of their diverse Latinx heritages."

Aldama, also known as Professor Latinx, brings his extensive experience as an award-winning curator of several comics series and as author of dozens of fiction and nonfiction books, including comics—and animation shorts to the project. His co-editor, Angela M. Sánchez, is a writer, cartoonist, magician, staff writer for Disney TVA, and author of Scruffy and the Egg.

The anthology features over fifty contributors creating what Terry Hong in Booklist describes as work highlighting "both physical and cultural nourishment" through "unique styles and various methods [that] underscore the diverse Latinx experience—deprivation and bounty, harassment and celebration." As Ngozi Ukazu, New York Times bestselling creator of Check, Please!, puts it: "With vibrant perspectives, depth, and tons of heart, From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides has something for everyone."

The collection spans from "a simple quesadilla eaten hot on the way to school, to a Puerto Rican grandmother's offering of guineitos en escabeche, to a homesick Chicano punk's reverse-engineered tamales," presenting food as both "a gift from elders to children" and "a marker of continuity and togetherness amid a dominant culture that may dismiss its flavors." Sports stories range from "the perseverance of the Mayan game pok ta' pok" to "the unifying surge of lucha libre or soccer fandom," providing what the editors describe as "a path to friendship and connection across national and language barriers."

Nationally syndicated cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz celebrates the anthology as "a graphic pozole of flavor explosions," adding that "consuming page after page of amazing artwork and intimate food and sports tales will stir your soul and nourish your panza." José R. Ralat, taco editor for Texas Monthly, simply declares it the "best thing since tacos."

For the Latinx Pop Magazine, Pablo Leon sat down with co-editors Frederick Luis Aldama and Angela M. Sánchez to discuss how this groundbreaking anthology reclaims Latino narratives through the powerful lenses of food and sports.

Pablo Leon: Let's start with the genesis of the project. What is the significance of combining food and sports in Latino comics?

Frederick Luis Aldama: We all know we've been victims, positive and negative, of how the mainstream has stereotyped us—that we are only food or we are only sports. And that's in the best-case situation. Otherwise we're like bad hombres, right? We're the ones threatening to cross the border and take the jobs. So what better place than to go right to the heart of this? Angela and I invited Latinx creatives to think about and recreate these key moments in their lives around experiences with food or sports as a way to complicate, reclaim, and own this space that's so important to our culture but that often gets mishandled, misappropriated, and stereotyped.

Angela Sanchez: To add to that, I'd say maybe the Part 2 of this needs to be one on arts and music! But seriously, these broad categories of food and sports are some of the first interactions that outsiders tend to have with any culture. They tend to be the most superficial buckets that folks can interact with. Yet for folks within said communities, those tend to hold very significant, very visceral memories. It's the weird double-headed coin—on one side you have what is very overt, not necessarily in-depth engagement with a culture, and on the flip side, for somebody else, there is so much memory and different types of ritual practice and connection.

Pablo: Angela, as someone working in animation, how did this project connect with you and with your other work?

Angela: I'm a big believer in visual storytelling. I think there's a lot to say about how the right images can accompany a text and bring a story to life. When a story fully comes to life for us, we can then empathize with that narrative, that creator, that community. It's why I build the representation of marginalized stories into my own projects—my own comics, picture books, novels, or the projects 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 visible and our stories visible.

Pablo: Fede, how does this anthology fit within Latino comics publishing generally and the Latinographix series specifically that you created and curated with OSU Press?

Frederick: That takes me back. I remember when I was writing my first book on Latino comics, Your Brain on Latino Comics, traveling all over the country to create a living, breathing archive of all the Latino/a/x creators across the country that were having an impact on comics but weren't visible in the way their work merited. The stories were the same across the board—they would pitch, knock on doors to publishers, and get either no answers or rejections.

I was in a position where I could actually make some kind of small difference, so I gave OSU Press $10,000 and said, "This should get us started to help with production costs and help you all figure out how to produce high-quality graphic novels and comics from our community." That's when Latinographix was born. Latinographix gives us visibility--and cultural capital. It's an academic press, which is really important for us because we've been denied that so often and continue to be denied that. It's not only venues, but it's also being visible.

Serenity Sersecíon's "Tengo Hambre"

Pablo: Can you share a couple of examples of really powerful moments from the anthology?

Angela: One story that stuck out to me early on was Serenity Sersecíon's "Tengo Hambre." It's that intersection of both class and ethnic identity—what does it mean to be poor, but also what does it mean to be brown and poor? When she talked about sharing a bag of Sun Chips with her friends and then crushing up the bag so you have "more" chips—you're just breaking the chips into smaller pieces—that stuck out to me. I've been there.

I appreciate that we get a lot of roundedness in both categories. Food isn't strictly "Oh, come here, mijo," such warm, fuzzy memories in the kitchen with your abuela. Food can have trauma tied to it. Sports can also have a negative, dark side to it. Having a story like "Tengo Hambre" allows us to reckon with the fact that not all stories about food are warm and fuzzy, and that some deal with harder issues like poverty, racism, and eating disorders.

 Josh Trujillo and Celeste Cruz's "Pok Ta' Pok"

Frederick: The food shaming is important, but so is the celebrating and the intergenerational connecting. There's nothing like a smell to transport us immediately to another time and place. But sometimes food can take us to places that are violent, traumatizing. I love the way each of these stories puts pressure on and complicates our experience with something that can be reduced to something too simple. I also love Josh Trujillo and Celeste Cruz's "Pok Ta' Pok" in the sports section that takes us back to our Mayan ancestors and the pok-ta-pok ball game. It reminds us and the world that we have been doing these kinds of things for a very, very long time—long time before Friday Night Lights was a thing.

Eliamaría Madrid's story "Churros"

Pablo: How does food relate to resistance?

Angela: I like when we have contributors who use humor to subvert and contend with stereotypes. I'm thinking specifically of Eliamaría Madrid's story "Churros," drawn in this squishy, chibi cartoony style. Her white classmate assumes that all Mexicans must know how to make churros, and then she goes, "No, but also, oh no, am I not Mexican enough if I don't know how to make churros?" That's a good story that captures our ni de aquí, ni de allá caught in the middle sensibility of Latinos. You can't assimilate into US culture because you are not white enough, and on the flip side you are also not Mexican enough.

Frederick: These stories celebrate a kind of claiming of space, preservation of memory, the evolution of food and sport traditions. They're not the same—foods are constantly being transformed. Yet there's still a common denominator around them, which is resistance, defiance. Because every homemade tortilla, even if it's a little bit different from a couple of generations back, is not Taco Bell.

Pablo: Let's talk about the significance of sports in our culture, from ancient pok-ta-pok to modern lucha libre. How do you see this connection?

Frederick: It's important to know that we have a deep, long, planetary history of engaging with one another in and through competitive sport. The community that builds around sport is super significant. These stories give a specificity to the way we engage with and experience sports. Sometimes it can be quite alienating—"Why aren't you good at soccer or baseball? You're Latino, right?" It's also about articulating isolation and putting that in the world so that others can see themselves and feel less isolated. Community can build around a story that's actually talking about isolation from community in sports.

Angela: Sports is something that builds community. Looking at the historical range, from pok-ta-pok across Central America into what is now the US Southwest, you had this ball game that was played everywhere, usually with religious significance. It was used to make decisions that were oftentimes faith-making for a given group or community. Even if you don't have a positive experience of sports, you can't ignore it. It is physically engaging in some way or another. Whether you are an active participant or an observer, you find yourself engaged in this activity.

Alberto Ledesma's "Lessons From the Undocumented Foul Line"

Frederick: Alberto Ledesma's story about basketball is powerful in how he shares that documentation status—undocumented status—doesn't matter once you're on that court. In 2017, I launched the Latinographix series with the publication of his Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer. The community created on the basketball court transcends legal status. That's a powerful symbol of belonging that at once is bound by rules and at the same time transcends them in a really meaningful way.

Pablo: Why do you think it's important to preserve our Latino experiences in such a visual medium like comics?

Angela: It goes back to visual storytelling. Sometimes seeing the representation, something drawn, hits differently than strictly words on a page. Your brain is connecting the words and visual action as the author specifically wants you to envision it. No AI was used in the making of these comics. It's important to have human-made aspects of art. If you start to remove humanity from the making of art, you're doing just that—you're removing humanity.

Frederick: The visual as dominant in comic book storytelling transcends at least alphabetic literacy restrictions or barriers. Maybe you're monolingual Spanish, and you see these stories—you're still going to get something because the visual is the dominant ingredient. The line becomes the indelible signature of the messiness of human life. It's irreplaceable. We're getting this deep reminder of our literal anchoring, staking in the ground of our humanity with the very line of the visual that's being drawn.

Pablo: What conversations do you hope this book will spark?

Angela: Anti-fascist ones! But honestly, I really hope it sparks ones that talk about diversity within the large and wieldy terms we use in the US. I want to open up discussions about how many identities are lumped underneath the term Latino. I really hope it draws attention to just how many different voices you can get in just one anthology, and I hope that it sparks curiosity and encourages folks to continue seeking out more stories like these.

Pablo: Where can people find this book?

Frederick: Everywhere—Amazon, of course, and the Ohio State University Press website; it's good to support our independent and academic publishers and they often offer discounts and free shipping.

Pablo: Is there something I didn't ask that you'd like to say as a closing?

Frederick: There was a lot of work to get here. There's still a lot of work to be done. It's a hustle and we need to make sure that we're constantly moving the boulder—or the marigold, whatever you want to call it—forward. That requires a lot of work not just individually but collectively.

Angela: Comics has always been a more subversive space. If there is a particular segment of literature—because comics are literature—that will be at the forefront of any type of political movement, it's going to be comics. I'm very proud of this anthology. Better now than any other time.

From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides is available through Ohio State University Press and all of the major booksellers.