Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border
Living in El Paso, just a mile from the Rio Grande, Octavio is a skinny brown kid on the border, riding his bike out into the desert, growing up among those who live there and those passing through on their way north. Rituals of childhood and rites of passage are remembered as singular, dramatic events, moments of trauma and transformation with life-changing reverberations.
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Tells stories about his childhood and coming of age, including his parents migration to the United States from Mexico, his first encounter with racism, and finding a Mexican migrant girl hiding in the cotton fields.
-- "New York Times"Solis shares his memories as a brown person on the border with a keen eye and an agile way with words...Solis hones each scene with striking sensual imagery...In all, a beautiful, evocative, and timely expression of border culture for every library collection.
-- "Booklist"Solis' carefully crafted Retablos [is] an expansive new vision of a troubled America.
-- "Seattle Times"Filtered through veils of distance and time, these scenes and reflections are wonderful and weird flashes of childhood, adolescence and early adulthood in the life of this particular Mexican American boy.
-- "San Francisco Chronicle"The book is rendered in tight, stand-alone recollections rich with poetry and honesty...If retablos are offerings, then Solis' book is a gift of memory, not always pleasant, but always true.
-- "Dallas Morning News"
