Realities of Graphic Novels: An Interview with Frederick Aldama

Abstract

The trend about producing and reading graphic novels has grown since the late twentieth century. These books with comic backgrounds seem to have a miraculous energy. They have been even appealing to unenthusiastic readers. They tempt people of different age groups, races and genders. They are also used for teaching ESL courses, e-learning activities, designing reality games, and teaching creative writing. If you talk to its followers, you may get the feedback that graphic novels can fulfil your demands and dreams from writing your assignments to taking you to the moon. Although many researchers have investigated the benefits of graphic novels, many faculties and librarians are still reluctant to include graphic novels in their curricula. Perhaps it is simply the attitude of many teachers and librarians that graphic novels look like a comic book, and simply are not “real” books. They have too few words, too many pictures, and lack quality to be seriously considered as literature. In the following, I, Ruzbeh Babaee, did an interview with Distinguished Professor Frederick Luis Aldama on realities of graphic novels.

Aldama is a distinguished scholar and Professor of English at The Ohio State University, United States. In the departments of English and Spanish & Portuguese he is involved in teaching courses on US Latino and Latin American cultural phenomena, literature, film, music, video games, and comic books.  He has founded and directed the White House Hispanic Bright Spot awarded LASER/Latino and Latin American Space for Enrichment Research. Professor Aldama won the Ohio Education Summit Award for Founding & Directing LASER in 2016. In April 2017, Aldama was awarded OSU’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching and inducted into the Academy of Teaching. He is the author, co-author, and editor of 30 books, including his first book of fiction/graphic fiction, Long Stories Cut Short: Fictions from the Borderlands.