El Paso Matters Q&A with ‘Retablos’ author Octavio Solis

Playwright and director Octavio Solis, known for stage works such as “Scene With Cranes,” “Quixote Nuevo,” “Mother Road,” and “El Paso Blue,” has parlayed his narrative skills to memoir with his book “Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border.” Born and raised in El Paso, Solis draws deeply from his upbringing in a border town to create a vivid portrayal of life along the Texas-Mexico divide.

“Retablos,” the latest pick of the El Paso Matters Book Club, offers readers an intricate mosaic of Solis’ childhood experiences, much like the devotional retablos that adorn homes along the border. The memoir captures the essence of life steeped in religious tradition and the ever-present tension of immigration.

“What I find unique about the border region is how it feels like its own separate country, different from the U.S. and Mexico, possessed of its own physics, its own mysteries, its own mythology,” Solis said. 

Solis’ career in theater has earned him numerous accolades, including the 2019 Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre award from the William Inge Center, the 2018 Imagen Award for his consultancy on Disney-Pixar’s “Coco,” and the 2014 PEN Center Literary Award for Drama. His membership in the Texas Institute of Letters, New Dramatists alumni, and the Dramatists Guild further highlights his contributions to American theater.

El Paso Matters talked with the author about his book’s blend of personal narrative and cultural reflection, and the view it offers of the unique identity of the border region.

El Paso Matters: What are some key themes you would like readers, particularly El Pasoans, to take away from your book?

Solis: Our common human experience, the struggles we face as Americans, and our unique identity as a border people; these are some of the concerns that emerge from my book. 

El Paso Matters: What’s your favorite line in the book and why?

Solis: “That’s how they come, these memories. Like a set of retablos, votive images painted on old beaten tin, marked with the mystery of being, with acts of transgression recorded for those who need to remember.”   

This line encapsulates the weight and meaning of each of the stories I am telling in my book.

El Paso Matters: Some of your books and writings deal with El Paso, immigrants, Hispanic culture and growing up in a binational region. What is the key to keeping readers that are not from the area interested in these topics?

Solis: These stories are ultimately about rites of passage we all go through. Learning the difference between received faith and one’s personal orientation; the realization that mothers are actually mortal; the first meeting with a god-like human; the first love; the first heartbreak; the first awareness of shame; the passage from knowledge to ignorance; the mystery of first lust. We all undergo these rites that make us who we are. 

El Paso Matters: As an author, what do you make of the current national debate regarding the censorship of books at school libraries?

Solis: I’m aghast and dismayed at the general censorship of all important literature. As a champion of Twain, Joyce, Nabokov and Burroughs, I cannot believe we are re-litigating literature and censoring books that express our changing mores around gender, race and class on specious moral grounds. It’s vile to me. 

El Paso Matters: What’s next for you? Any upcoming projects or aspirations?

Solis: I am working on a trilogy based on Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” The first play, “Mother Road,” is already being produced. The second work is entitled “Father Land.” I am also writing a play about Ted Williams, the famed baseball slugger, who was actually half-Mexican, but concealed this fact for most of his life.