Latinx Lives, In Living Color

Latinographix, a new book series by prolific author and scholar Frederick Luis Aldama, explodes onto the scene with two engrossing and gorgeous books that push understandings of graphic narratives into new and exciting directions. The series is the first to devote special attention to comic book storytelling that shines light on stories by and about Latinx-identified persons in the United States. In the midst of a political climate where vitriolic rhetoric and inhumane policies are hurled at Latinx communities, where distortions and caricatures all-too-easily become gospel for those immune to fact-based realities, these offerings come as a draught of fresh air in a fetid swamp. In other words, anything that provides a platform for Latinx communities to tell their stories and have their say—in their own way—ought to be a welcomed development in the narrative landscape of a nation whose birth certificate literally opens with the collective pronoun “we.”

Alberto Ledesma’s Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Undocumented Vignettes from a Pre-American Life is the author’s own declaration that in America, he too sings. Told partly in traditional nonfiction (that is, using words only) and partly through visual/verbal art, Ledesma uses the conceit of the diary as his mode of conveyance in this stunning book. Divided into chapters that serve as notable moments and events in Ledesma’s life, Diary opens with the moment he decided he would become “un Americano,” a moment that must surely dawn upon the millions of immigrants to the United States. Ledesma’s story is atypical but no less powerful for it, going from being “a nervous undocumented immigrant kid” to a university professor and administrator at the University of California, Berkeley.

Through a multiplicity of artistic styles, Ledesma captures the roller-coaster emotionality of the undocumented in the US. At times, he uses a simple, cartoony art technique that pokes fun and satirizes the situation in which he often finds himself or his community, such as in “A Glossary of Undocumented Grammatical Terms.” At other times, Ledesma’s art is serious, somber, or inspirational, as in the page featuring Erika Andiola, whose family was targeted for deportation, and the letter “B” in “The Undocumented Alphabet,” where a Latino father holds a paycheck that does not match his level of work. Many of the visuals were undoubtedly created as stand-alone pieces. But brought together with Ledesma’s narrative of his life’s journey, the parts become much greater than their sum—and what a payoff it is. It is so rare that a formerly undocumented Latino man who has worked hard and triumphed in so many ways gets to tell, both visually and verbally, the story of his experience and his current engagement with immigration policies and the people they affect.

Reading Diary gives one the sense that this was not a book planned with a singular vision from its inception. In truth, that may be what makes this book so powerful. In its pages, one finds a man searching for an answer to an existential question that, paradoxically, many face but few have answered so deeply, intimately, or publicly. It took many years for Ledesma to create the visual art, the “doodles […] that represent a sort of therapy that helped [him] grapple with [his] shifting identities,” but they are more than doodles to the objective reader. Rather, they capture the evanescent nature of uncertainty and transience that dominates the existence of the undocumented.

Ledesma’s Diary is a clear and winning effort to displace that evanescence with something both tangible and meaningful. This tangibility is no more evident than in the book...