Long Stories Cut Short: Fictions from the Borderlands

by Frederick Luis Aldama, Ana María Shua (Foreword)

Xbox videogamer cholo cyberpunks. Infants who read before they talk. Vatos locos, romancing abuelos, border crossers and border smugglers, drug kingpins, Latina motorbike riders, philosophically musing tweens, and so much more.







The stories in this dynamic bilingual prose-art collection touch on the universals of romance, family, migration and expulsion, and everyday life in all its zany configurations. Each glimpse into lives at every stage—from newborns and children to teens, young adults, and the elderly—further submerges readers in psychological ups and downs. In a world filled with racism, police brutality, poverty, and tensions between haves and have-nots, these flashes of fictional insight bring gleaming clarity to life lived where all sorts of borders meet and shift.







Frederick Luis Aldama and graphic artists from Mapache Studios give shape to ugly truths in the most honest way, creating new perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about life in the borderlands of the Américas. Each bilingual prose-art fictional snapshot offers an unsentimentally complex glimpse into what it means to exist at the margins of society today. These unflinching and often brutal fictions crisscross spiritual, emotional, and physical borders as they give voice to all those whom society chooses not to see.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 7, 2017

Reviews

[Ernest Hogan]

I am happy to report that Frederick Luis Aldama's story collection lives up to the cover by Jaime Hernandez.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was amazed with these short stories. They are not full of all life-long details but they make you think about, they make you think about your life, your relationship, priorities and decisions you make. From my point of view, it changes the mind so everyone should read it.

[Jaime Vinal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flash fiction. That's what this style is called, I learned this label. My Spanish reading is poor but I noticed translation was indirect, a lovely twist, stories side by side, English / Spanish, but each it's own voice.

[Wendy Espinoza Cotta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a bilingual (Spanish and English) series of flash fiction short stories that include graphics that have a graphic novel style. Characters from the sordid to the inspirational flit in and out of the reader's view, and leave the reader wanting to more. The American Dream is shattered into a thousand pieces in this powerful and searing collection. The Spanish shorts are vibrant in their own originality. As the author notes, "We have two roots and it is our task to water them both." (p. 34). For those of Mexican-American heritage, this book will do.