{ "item_title" : "Retablos", "item_author" : [" Octavio Solis "], "item_description" : "Recommended by the New York Times and NBC News, and called one of the Best Books of the Year by Buzzfeed The New York Times directs readers to Retablos if you want to know what's life really like on the Mexican border. Solis grew up just a mile from the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, and he 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.--Concepci n de Le n, New York Times Seminal moments, rites of passage, crystalline vignettes--a memoir about growing up brown at the U.S./Mexico border. More praise for Octavio Solis's Retablos: This is American and Mexican literature a stone's throw from the always hustling El Paso border.--Gary Soto, author of The Elements of San Joaquin We inhabit a border world rich in characters, lush with details, playful and poignant, a border that refutes the stereotypes and divisions smaller minds create. Solis reminds us that sometimes the most profound truths are best told with crafted fictions--and he is a master at it.--Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garc a Girls Lost Their Accents ... it's hard not to consider the border itself as a representation of a 'terrible rift, ' a split between homes, communities, identities, generations. While reading this generous and eye-opening account, it's easy to see how, for the country at large, the rift has only deepened.--Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed Best Books of Fall 2018 Landing somewhere between Neil Gaiman and Juan Rulfo, Solis secularizes the mythological by turning men and women into saintly figures--like their criadamaid], Consuelo, and a white priest who shows his family empathy--and monsters: border agents who take his friends away and school bullies.--Michael Adam Carroll, The Millions There has never been a border book like Retablos, a collection of smoldering epiphanies suffering the baptizing waters of recall. . . .--Roberto Ontiveros, San Antonio Current 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.--Beatriz Terrazas, Dallas Morning News The experience of reading his tightly contained memories in succession is a bit like drawing old coins up from a wishing well. 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.-- Sophie Haigney, San Francisco Chronicle Octavio Solis' Retablos recounts a 'beautiful, messy' youth on the border. Though its title evokes Mexican folk art, Retablos is closer in effect to that of French pointillism. Its small dabs of vivid color produce a brilliant cumulative effect.--Steven G. Kellman, The Texas Observer In this debut memoir, playwright Solis delivers top-notch vignettes of his youth with riveting imagery and empathy, recounting--and embellishing, he says--memories of growing up brown in El Paso, Tex. . . . These brilliantly told stories of missteps and redemption are a treat.--Publishers Weekly . . .what struck me most about each chapter was Solis's ability to plant a specific image in your mind. With every retablo, you can see in ferocious detail exactly what the author wants you to see, like a special kind of telepathy. I found myself wanting to paint them.--Caitlyn Reynolds, The Los Angeles Review of Books In all, a beautiful, evocative, and timely expression of border culture for every collection.--Sara Martinez, Booklist In this coming-of-age memoir, a playwright illuminates the culture of the El Paso border as he perceived it when he was young. . . . An intriguing work that transcends category, drawing from facts but reading like fiction.--Kirkus Reviews", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/87/286/786/0872867862_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "15.95", "online_price" : "15.95", "our_price" : "15.95", "club_price" : "15.95", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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Retablos

As explained by Octavio Solis, a distinguished Latino author who has written over 20 plays, a retablo is a small votive painting commonly associated with Latin American cultures. It’s usually painted on cheap, reused metal, and it tells the story of a near-disaster that was survived only by the grace of God. By commemorating the event, the retablo can transform that story of salvation into a myth. But memory is slippery, and retelling a story, even on a buckled sheet of metal, results in embellishments and refinements. Facts become murky as names are forgotten and events misremembered. Yet despite its imprecision, the retablo expresses a profound truth not only about its maker but also the world he or she lives in. As a result, the retablo itself becomes a part of the myth as well.

There is struggle here, but there is also redemption.

The 50 episodes in Solis’ memoir are like retablos because they are the true, if imprecise, myths that explain his life and his world. Set in the gritty border town of El Paso, where Solis spent his youth during the 1960s and ’70s, the stories of Retablos are as harsh and dry as the sunbaked land along the Rio Grande that he so vividly evokes. Unlike the figures in traditional retablos, the characters populating Solis’ memoir are far from saintly. Instead, he peoples his retablos with the bullies, immigration police, drug users and prostitutes of his hometown, as well as with the family that was at once a solace and a frustration. Solis is dogged by violence and poverty, and his family suffers greatly from the strain of living a life in which disaster can strike without notice or mercy. There is struggle here, but there is also redemption and reconciliation, joy and love.

These written retablos reconstruct Solis’ youth, with its dangers, juxtapositions and all-too-few victories. It is a distinctly Latino experience in a distinctly Latino world. But this story is universal—we all grow up, and we all need to reconcile who we are with who we were. Like the images he emulates, Solis’ stories transcend the limits of borders and time.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.