Octavio Solis

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.… (més)

What a beautiful, heartbreaking, universe-encompassing play. I'm astonished at the number of themes and questions Solis brings so elegantly and eloquently into this relatively short work--the varied experiences of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. ("illegal," first generation, here by desire, here because of someone else's dreams, etc."); violence, love and understanding/misunderstanding among family members; the meaning of sex and love, the power of each independently and when they merge or collide; the importance of voice, what it means when one can or can't speak, when one can or can't be understood and who can or can't understand one other; the role of language, and how that changes depending upon when and how it can be shared, who has fluency, who controls when which language(s) are used; and ultimately what does it mean to be alive and what are the limitations and affordances of our corporeal and mental selves.… (més)