Retablos

August 15, 2018
In this coming-of-age memoir, a playwright illuminates the culture of the El Paso border as he perceived it when he was young.Award-winning playwright Solis explains the genesis of his debut book before proceeding to vignettes of his formative years in a border city. First, the title, as he explains it, refers to "a devotional painting...at once visual and literary, [which] records the transgression, the divine mediation and the offering of thanks in a single frame, thus forming a kind of flash-fiction account of that person's electrifying, life-altering event." Thus we have a series of self-contained vignettes, though there are some connecting threads--e.g., family, the mysterious outsider boy known only as "Demon," and the equally mysterious "Runner," who may be running to something or from something but never stops to explain himself. Solis describes the stories as "disconnected (and yet thoroughly interconnected, noting that, through memory and reconstruction, "I'm trying to figure myself out. I'm coming to terms with who I am by looking back at what I was." Inevitably, he deals with identity, as a boy born in America to Mexican parents, with sexual awakening, and with the first stirrings of his literary ambitions. The pieces follow a chronological progression, though with a recognition that border issues and tensions are timeless, that "there will always be those who want to come across and those who want to keep them where they are." By the time he made his first return from college, he viewed his city, family, and origins with a totally fresh perspective. Within these pieces, he aims for a truth that he admits has been filtered through memory and shaped by selection: "I suppose I am using the poetic voice to convey the authentic."An intriguing work that transcends category, drawing from facts but reading like fiction.

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November 5, 2018
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. Framed as a series of retablos (“a devotional painting a dire event... which the person survives thanks to the intercession of the Divine. At once visual and literary, they record the transgression, the divine mediation and the offering of thanks in a single frame, a kind of flash-fiction account of that person’s electrifying, life-altering event”), the chapters capture poignant scenes with both the innocence of childhood and mature hindsight: after recounting mispronouncing “ocean” in front of his whole class, Solis concludes, “To get the pronunciation right in the end, I had to get it wrong in the beginning.” That mature perspective is alive to structural injustice: of discovering a border crosser during a game of hide-and-seek, Solis notes, “I’m hiding for fun. She’s hiding for her life.” He displays his talent in startling descriptions: the “dog who wears his tongue on the side of his mouth like a scarf,” the act of “taking English and dropping its chassis and adding some hot rims.” These brilliantly told stories of missteps and redemption are a treat.

October 15, 2018
Hundreds of residents on the Texas-Mexico border recently had their U.S. passports revoked, making renowned playwright Solis' declaration in the introduction to this sui generis memoir that the shit on the border never changes a bit premature. It seems that things can always get worse. A self-described anchor baby, Solis shares his memories as a brown person on the border with a keen eye and an agile way with words, endowing these snapshots from his childhood in El Paso with the visceral gut punch of Mexican retablos?, devotional paintings in vivid colors on metal or wood. Solis hones each scene with striking sensual imagery: his grandmother Mama Concha with her rollers, red lipstick, sagging hose, and purse fragrant with Wrigley's Chewing Gum; the ghostly figure of a runner who threads his way through the book, aging as Solis ages, advancing under Solis' curious gaze, then vanishing into a misty distance. In all, a beautiful, evocative, and timely expression of border culture for every library collection.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)