Daniel Olivas interviews Frederick Luis Aldama | Los Angeles Review of Books

BY ANY STANDARD, Frederick Luis Aldama is, well, crazy smart. The kind of smart that is backed up by degrees from prestigious universities, with a professorship at yet another prestigious university, and about 30 nonfiction books to his credit. And those are just the broad outlines of what is a remarkably productive career in academia. But if you ever meet him, Aldama simply comes off as an attentive, kind, funny, and humble guy.

Aldama, who was born in Mexico City, is the son of a Guatemalan/Irish American mother from Los Angeles and a Mexican father from Mexico City. His family eventually moved to California. Aldama earned his undergraduate degree in English (summa cum laude) from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, followed by a PhD from Stanford University in 1999.

Aldama eventually moved to the Midwest. There, he became a University Distinguished Scholar as well as Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University, where he teaches Latino/a and Latin American literature, television, comic books, and film in the departments of English, Spanish and Portuguese, and Film Studies...read more