Puro Pinche True Fictions: Prose & Comics by José Alaniz
“Puro Pinche True Fictions” collects short stories and comics, mostly set in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas/Mexico border. The stories reflect the author’s upbringing in this region as a second-generation Mexican-American, at times fusing folk beliefs with Bradbury-style science fiction. For example, “Tamales” sets the immigration narrative on Mars in 2063, when a migrant family makes the crossing in search of work via (malfunctioning) rocket. Other stories, like “Genoveva” and “Where You Stop the Story,” retell painful family episodes going back years and generations. The comics section, “Electric Youth,” is the most explicitly autobiographical, recounting incidents from Alaniz’s childhood in South Texas, some of them told in Spanglish. These range from nostalgic (like one showing how common and pleasant it used to be to cross the river to Reynosa, Mexico for family outings) to funny/gross (the author’s memory of stepping on a nail) to self-flagellating (the reimagining of ethnic self-loathing through a Star Wars metaphor). This collection will appeal to readers with an interest in contemporary Chicano fiction and comics.
From pop cultural musings to bloodcurdling family legends and pre-conquest lore, Alaniz folds time and space, inviting us to dip in. Serious and deeply probing as well as irreverent and rollicking fun, Alaniz joins our pantheon of greats like Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, Dagoberto Gilb, Michele Seros, Myriam Gurba, and José Antonio Burciaga. Roll that top back and fasten tight those lap belts, ‘cause Puro Pinche is gonna take you for one heck of a ride.
— Frederick Luis Aldama is award-winning author and the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at UT Austin
The stories, pictures, and memories woven by José Alaniz touch the reader like a caress from Mnemosyne or a chingazo from Tezcatlipoca. A hybrid book poised between prose fiction and comics, Alaniz’s unique volume awakens readers to the mysteries and revelations of the Rio Grande Valley and worlds beyond.
— Dr. William “Memo” Nericcio, Curator of the Mextasy Circus of Desmadres and Professor, English and Comparative Literature, at San Diego State University
Born and raised in Edinburg, TX, José Alaniz has worn a few hats over the years, including those of journalist, cartoonist and spinner of yarns. His work has appeared in The Bobcat News Journal, The Daily Texan, Analecta, The Moscow Tribune, The Berkeley Fiction Review, The Mesquite Review, The Stranger, the Seattle anthology Dune, AltCom: How To Survive a Dictatorship (2018), Tales From La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology (2018), BorderX: A Crisis in Graphic Detail (2020) and SCARFFF. In 2020 he published his first comics collection, The Phantom Zone and Other Stories and in 2023 his second, The Compleat Moscow Calling (both from Amatl Comix).
He is also a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Cinema & Media Studies (adjunct) at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has published three monographs: Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi, 2010); Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (UPM, 2014); and Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia (Ohio State University Press, 2022). He has also co-edited two essay collections, Comics of the New Europe: Refl ections and Intersections (with Martha Kuhlman, Leuven University Press, 2020) and Uncanny Bodies: Disability and Superhero Comics (with Scott T. Smith, Penn State University Press, 2019). He formerly chaired the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF) and was a founding board member of the Comics Studies Society.