Found Forms, Frontera Stories: An Interview with José Alaniz

Cover Tales of Bart: A Novel in Three Acts

I had the pleasure of speaking with José Alaniz about his novel Tales of BART: A Novel in Three Acts, a richly layered work that disrupts traditional narrative structures. Kirkus Reviews described how Alaniz “captures the mood and sentiment of an old Western expedition in a remarkable way, with gripping writing about Texas and its neighbor Mexico and their complex relationship.” Indeed, it is a "house of mirrors," the book spans eras—from the Republic of Texas to a dystopian future Atlanta to 1990s Los Angeles—while exploring themes of translation, identity, and textual reliability. Structured as a collection of "found documents," it draws on epistolary and diary formats to echo the roots of the modern novel. Its inventive typography and genre-blending push readers to engage with text in unexpected ways. Here, as in all his creative work, Alaniz pushes at the thresholds of aesthetic conventions.

José Alaniz is currently working on Fronteras de Fierro, a comics journalism project examining the impact of the border wall on the Rio Grande Valley.

Rose Padilla: José, thank you for taking the time to chat with us here at the Latinx Pop Lab, especially right at the close of our BIPOC PoP 2025 event. Your new book, Tales of Bart, just dropped with Brown Ink, an imprint of FlowerSong Press. There’s so much happening in it—it’s dynamic, expansive. You move fluidly across states of nationhood, cultures, languages, hemispheres, identities, perspectives, and more.

José Alaniz: I’m really thrilled—ecstatic, honestly—to be here at BIPOC PoP—and for the third time. I'm so grateful to all the organizers and to the incredible work you all are doing at UT’s Latinx Pop Lab. It feels like you're on the cusp of something groundbreaking and deeply necessary.

As for Tales of Bart—that’s a big question. I won’t say too much about how it culminates, but I describe it as a house of mirrors. It’s a layered, postmodern jumble—texts within texts, meditations on translation, and destabilizations of character. Each chapter is grounded in a different time and place: the Republic of Texas era, a far-future dystopia called Atlanta, and 1990s Los Angeles. I did a lot of research, and a lot of imagining, to bring each setting to life as vividly and tangibly as possible.

But even as I ground the reader in these spaces, I’m always pulling the rug out. These are supposedly translated texts, but your translator may not be reliable. I’m interested in eroding a sense of narrative or identity stability.

Rose Padilla: What inspired you to write this book—and why now?

José Alaniz: Confession—it’s not “now.” I actually wrote this novel 20 years ago in grad school. Publishing can be a slow grind. Originally, I didn’t write it as a novel. It started as three separate novellas. I can’t even remember which I wrote first. But eventually I realized each contained this shadow figure—Bart—and that translation was a thematic thread across all three. So I created a framing story—“a little brain story,” as I call it—and that helped unify them.

More than inspiration, it came down to what I was immersed in at the time. I was reading a lot of Vladimir Nabokov, digging into critical theory—Bakhtin, narratology. The academic part of me wanted to master these ideas, but the creative side wanted to mess with them. Tales of Bart became my response to all that.

Rose Padilla: If you could put this book into the hands of anyone—your ideal reader—who would it be?

José Alaniz: Honestly, I don’t really think about a specific reader when I write. That might sound strange, but it's the truth. Of course, I’m aware of audience on some level—you have to be, especially if you want your work out in the world. But when I’m in the thick of creating, I’m not imagining a particular person.

I admire works like Finnegans Wake, which are almost unreadable by design. Not that I’m aiming for opacity, but I’m interested in what different readers bring to a text. Some might connect with the Republic of Texas section; others might gravitate toward the sci-fi chapter. I think of it like a buffet. You don’t eat everything, but you find what speaks to you—and you can always go back for more.

Nabokov once said that if people didn’t understand his work, it was because they were bad readers—not because he was a bad writer. That’s obnoxious, right? I think that’s a writer’s failure. But I do think rereading has power. With Tales of Bart, you can dip in and out. There’s no fixed order. It rewards a second or third pass.

Rose Padilla: Speaking of destabilization, your book moves across genres and even uses typography in inventive ways. The form itself becomes part of the narrative. There’s first-person narration, 1800s letters, courtroom testimonies—and my favorite, the 1990s chatrooms!

José Alaniz: Yes! Retro now, though it wasn’t when I first wrote it. I spent a lot of time in those early online chatrooms, and the spirit’s still the same—just more emojis now.

The form was crucial for me. I’ve always been fascinated by how the Surrealists and others—like the early 20th-century concrete poets—treated the page as a visual space. They played with text layout, fonts, bold/italic styles, even pasted materials in strange ways. I don’t see enough of that experimentation in fiction today.

Tales of Bart uses a found-documents conceit: it’s like you stumbled on a box filled with letters, diary entries, clippings, chat logs, etc. That might seem experimental, but it’s actually a throwback to the roots of the modern novel—Robinson Crusoe was a diary; Clarissa, Dangerous Liaisons—all epistolary. It’s about peeking into someone’s private life. That voyeuristic impulse is still with us—we just do it through TV and social media now.

I wanted the book to feel more like a manuscript than a polished novel. That’s why I asked FlowerSong Press to publish it full size. Shrinking it would lose the effect. When you open the book, I want it to feel like someone’s 1980s printout—a real found object.

Rose Padilla: I noticed that immediately. The size demands space—it makes you respect it. Final question: any exciting projects you’re working on now?

José Alaniz: Yes! I just came from John Jennings and Peter Murrieta’s roundtable. John said something that really resonated—he doesn’t get writer’s block because he always has bees in the hive, buzzing with ideas. That’s me too. The issue isn’t ideas—it’s time.

For the last few years, I’ve been working on a comics journalism project: Fronteras de Fierro: Wall Stories. It focuses on my home region, the Rio Grande Valley—ground zero for the so-called migration crisis. I examine how the border wall impacts the environment, culture, and daily life.

When Biden was elected, I thought the urgency might diminish. But here we are again—walls being rebuilt, militarization intensifying. It’s infuriating. I grew up crossing the bridge to Reynosa for lunch or a haircut. Now it’s barbed wire, patrol boats—it’s McHale’s Navy on the river.

The book includes voices from indigenous people, queer activists organizing drag shows to support trans migrants, and yes, folks who support the wall—many of whom are Mexican American. Border Patrol is a major employer there. Trump even flipped those counties.

So Fronteras de Fierro is personal and political. It’s part memoir, part comics journalism, and it’s my current passion project.

Rose Padilla: Thank you for sharing your work—and your time—with us.

José Alaniz: Thank you!

José Alaniz