Scan barcode
boggremlin's review
3.0
Vignettes of growing up as the son of Mexican immigrants while living in a 1970s US border town. Solis’ recollections are studded with machismo and tenderness. Recommend for those who enjoy masculine fumbling and coming of age.
balletbookworm's review
4.0
Retablos recreates a childhood growing up in a border town through short stories and micro fiction drawn from playwright Octavio Solis’s childhood. Each piece uses the idea of the retablo (a small votive painting created to thank a sacred person for their intercession in a crisis) to illustrate moments of awareness as a brown kid with immigrant parents: the first recognition of racism, a painful relationship with a sibling, a first job, interactions with Border Patrol, helping undocumented migrants, beginning to date.