Latinos in the End Zone

Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and Founder and Director of LASER/Latino & Latin American Space for Enrichment Research at The Ohio State University, USA. He is the author of 13 books, including: Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernande, The Routledge Concise History of Latino/a Literature, and ¡Muy Pop!: Conversations on Latino Pop Culture (co-authored with Ilan Stavans).Christopher González is Assistant Professor of Literatures and Languages, Texas A&M University-Commerce, USA.

• Preface: A Life Unexamined is Not Worth Living Prologue: Kick Offs 1. From Scrimmage Lines to End Zones: Latinos in the National Football League 2. From Punishing Penalties to Brown Bodies Raiding the NFL 3. Sidelined . . . No Más! 4. The Blitz . . . Heroes, Saviors, Saints, and Sinners Epilogue: End Zones and New Scrimmage Lines

"Football might be the most suitable metaphor to understand the role of Latinos in the United States today." - Ilan Stavans, General Editor, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature "Who knew that the NFL was Chicano? That the National Football League owed much of what it calls its legend to Americans of Mexican descent? Well Aldama and Gonzalez did and do and with Latinos in the End Zone they share with football fans and pointy-headed professors alike (not a group that often tailgates together) compelling, evocative, and moving stories that trace the Mexican DNA at the heart of the NFL." - William Nericcio, author of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America