Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
Hearing the author read the book was a bonus. Some of the stories didn't appeal to me.
reflective
fast-paced
Beautiful and vulnerable snapshots of a childhood in El Paso.
dark
funny
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Retablos is written in a short-story, vignette style that makes for a great book to listen to. I enjoyed the mix of themes around family, the border, figuring out one’s place in the community, among friends, family, and girls. I also appreciated the elements of the unknown that appear as natural, which read that way too. Enjoyable, though don’t listen around children, there is a lot of cussing.
Content Warnings
Minor: Cursing
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
This is a quick read. The book is composed of several vignettes which detail different stories from the author’s life. There were a few too many slurs for my taste, and at the same time, I do think the inclusion of some of the slurs really helps convey the innocence of childhood.
A collection of short stories/memories of the author’s childhood. I thoroughly enjoyed them all, well mostly all. Very male, but having just driven up from Mexico through Texas, with a few days in El Paso I was in the right mood for this. I liked them on the whole
I discovered Octavio Solis when Retablos was staged by Word for Word at a LitQuake event at the Elbo Room. The stories immerse you with their engaging prose, the universality of their familial characters, and small glimpses into Mexicanidad on the border. The author manages to infuse affection toward his bicultural identity and home, even when the reality was that he was growing up bicultural.ly on the border in a pretty racist environment given its proximity to Mexico and the continuous presence of the border patrol. It's comical, loving, and brutally honest. The dialogue is fast-paced (the author is a playwright). It was truly a pleasure to see it staged at this one time event and I look forward to seeing some of his actual plays someday.
With this collection of richly reconstructed scenes from his childhood and youth, Octavio Solis has created a vibrant collage of memories with an energy that reverberates throughout the reading experience. Passing through remembrances and thus musings on familial love and conflict, young passion and lust, a child's sense of freedom and constraint, racial conflicts across and alongside the border, one leaves this book a little wiser and also wondering about the lessons buried in our own stories.
I wanted to read this book while on vaca in NM last fall, for the aesthetic of desert and honoring the indigenous in a way. But here I am, having read it in the Midwest in early spring/but really it’s still winter. Traveling through different parts of the authors life, while he recounts moments of being Mexicano heavily drenched in mundane moments, pain, border woes, and the reality of being of color.