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In this comics anthology full of humor and heart, writers and artists from across the US pay tribute to the ways food and sports endure as touchstones in the Latin American diaspora. In the vein of Frederick Luis Aldama’s bestselling anthology Tales from la Vida, creators offer slice-of-life comics in an array of styles to capture common threads that bind this dizzyingly diverse community. 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, food is a gift from elders to children, a marker of continuity and togetherness amid a dominant culture that may dismiss its flavors. Sports, too, provide a path to friendship and connection across national and language barriers, anchoring fans and participants in a sense of identity and place, whether through the perseverance of the Mayan game pok ta’ pok, the unifying surge of lucha libre or soccer fandom, or a father and daughter’s shared love of horse racing. Together, the creators collected in From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides share a mosaic of stories that vividly portray Latinx identity and life today.

Contributors:
Aleasha Acevedo, José Alaniz, Frederick Luis Aldama, Julio Anta, Charlene Bowles, David Bowles, Adrian Carrillo, José Cabrera, Valerie Martinez Cabrera, Mauricio Alberto Cordero, Jaime Crespo, Celeste Cruz, Ernesto Cuevas Jr., Chris Escobar, Rolando Esquivel, Tim Fielder, Dustin Garcia, Eric J. García, Jorge Garza, Oscar Garza, Lucas Gattoni, Blas Goncalves-Borrego, Estella González, Carina Guevara, Aaron Guzman, Javier Hernandez, Sam Jimenez, Eric Kittelberger, Alberto Ledesma, Pablo Leon, Darren López, Patrick Lugo, Jarred A. Luján, Eliamaría Madrid, Miguel Martinez, Paloma Martínez-Cruz, Carlos Meyer, Marisol Meyer Driovínto, Paul Meyer, Rosie Murillo, Rafael Navarro, Daniel Parada, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Jazmin Puente, Raúl the Third, Anna Maria Richardson, Hector Rodriguez III, Theresa Rojas, Rafael Rosado, Andrea Rosales, Justin Rueff, Irma Ruiz, Angela M. Sánchez, Serenity Serseción, Javier Solórzano, Josh Trujillo, Cayetano Valenzuela, Diana “Dianita” Vargas Sampieri, Andrés Vera Martínez

The relentless motions and blinding colors of lucha libre, the high-flying wrestling sport, are the arresting backdrop to Nandi Comer’s collection Tapping Out. Mexican freestyle wrestling becomes the poet’s lyrical motif, uncovering what is behind the intricate masks we wear in society and our search for place within our personal histories. Comer’s poetic narratives include explorations of violence, trauma, and identity. The exquisite complications of the black experience in settled and unsettled spaces propel her linear explorations, which challenge the idea of metaphor and cadence.  

The harsh realities of being migrant and immigrant, being birthright and oppressed, are as hard-pressed as the plancha move to the body. Each poem in Tapping Out is a “freestyle movement” of language and complexity put on full display, under the bright lights and roars of survival. Comer’s splendid and barbed, Detroit style of language melts the masks with searing words.
 

The World of Lucha Libre is an insider’s account of lucha libre, the popular Mexican form of professional wrestling. Heather Levi spent more than a year immersed in the world of wrestling in Mexico City. Not only did she observe live events and interview wrestlers, referees, officials, promoters, and reporters; she also apprenticed with a retired luchador (wrestler). Drawing on her insider’s perspective, she explores lucha libre as a cultural performance, an occupational subculture, and a set of symbols that circulate through Mexican culture and politics. Levi argues that the broad appeal of lucha libre lies in its capacity to stage contradictions at the heart of Mexican national identity: between the rural and the urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle.

Levi considers lucha libre in light of scholarship about sport, modernization, and the formation of the Mexican nation-state, and in connection to professional wrestling in the United States. She examines the role of secrecy in wrestling, the relationship between wrestlers and the characters they embody, and the meanings of the masks worn by luchadors. She discusses male wrestlers who perform masculine roles, those who cross-dress and perform feminine roles, and female wrestlers who wrestle each other. Investigating the relationship between lucha libre and the mass media, she highlights the history of the sport’s engagement with television: it was televised briefly in the early 1950s, but not again until 1991. Finally, Levi traces the circulation of lucha libre symbols in avant-garde artistic movements and its appropriation in left-wing political discourse. The World of Lucha Libre shows how a sport imported from the United States in the 1930s came to be an iconic symbol of Mexican cultural authenticity.