The University of Arizona Press

September 26, 2024

This month author Melani Martinez publishes The Molino, a hybrid memoir that reckons with one family’s loss of home, food, and faith. Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Martinez shares the story of her family’s life and work in the heart of their downtown eatery, El Rapido. Opened by Martinez’s great-grandfather, Aurelio Perez, in 1933, El Rapido served tamales and burritos to residents and visitors to Tucson’s historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. For the family, the factory that bound them together was known for the giant corn grinder churning behind the scenes—the molino. With clear eyes and warm humor, Martinez documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forces the multigenerational family business to close its doors. Today, Melani answers five questions:

What sparked your interest in publishing the story of your family and your family’s business?

I wanted my family, and families like mine, to be represented in published stories of American experiences. The Mexican-American community and communities from Tucson and the Borderlands have incredible stories, but they are not shared or platformed as much as they could be for many readers and listeners who care about these stories. I knew El Rapido, our family business, mattered to this community. I believed El Rapido’s stories should be published for Tucson. My personal stories that also make up the memoir may be new for this audience, but I hope they resonate.

How has your relationship with the molino changed over time?

I think about the molino in three different ways: the grinding machine itself, the name my family gave to our place of work, and my reflective writing on the memories of this work with my family. In all three ways, the molino is all about process. It is sometimes a representative of the past, but for me it is more often a symbol of how things are constantly changing. I’ve written about the tension I felt with the molino and how I experienced a fear of it, a desire to get away from it. Putting these ideas in writing has helped me see that it is not something I can just walk away from—it never was. But I am not afraid of the machine anymore. I’m able to mourn the loss of the place where we lived and worked. I feel like I can more authentically celebrate the molino now.

What was the connection between El Rapido and México?

It seems like a tamalería / tortillería would have a pretty clear connection to México, but I’m not sure if it was always clear for me and my brother growing up as workers at El Rapido. This disconnect was often tied to language—even though we used some Spanish vocabulary regularly and listened to Mexican music everyday at El Rapido, we didn’t learn to speak the language fluently and struggled to communicate with our co-workers as well as customers and familiar people in our own community. As third generation, we were very isolated from México. Even though we were part of Tucson and Sonoran culture, we didn’t know quite how to connect to the land, the people, and the culture of a place just 70 miles south of us. In terms of our sense of place, El Rapido was one of the only ways we would experience a microcosm of this big idea that was “México.”  El Rapido let us taste something, hear something, and through iconic images that were all around us to also see something that told the story of México for us. It wasn’t the same story that we learned in school. It wasn’t the same story on television or in the movies. It might have been a little fuzzy and vague sometimes, but it was our most compelling artifact. If we needed any proof of our ancestry and ties to México, El Rapido was a definite “X” on the map we could point to.

Why did you decide to use the sometimes controversial figure of “El Pensamiento” to tell your story?

I had been writing the memoir for over a decade before El Pensamiento was named in the manuscript. I knew the storefront mural was very important to my family, especially my father, but I had only written this idea with plenty of space between me and the image of “The Sleep Mexican.”  I knew it was a complex and powerful image but I didn’t know how to address it confidently. Once I started to imagine the house itself as a character in the story, I realized that I had been missing the voice of an incredibly important El Rapido figure (the mural image) and I wanted to know where he really came from. Searching for “Sleepy’s” origin story made his character come alive for me. I realized his name (El Pensamiento) and then I could hear his voice. He is a narrator in the story because he reveals truth, especially as mijita (me as the primary narrator) struggles to articulate truth to herself. He is also a vessel for compassionately sharing the faith traditions and christian doctrines that have been rejected, resisted, or misunderstood. In this way, he serves as a typology of Christ for mijita. He speaks multiple languages, including the love languages recorded in scripture. His message and his likeness will always be controversial, but full of wisdom for those who listen to his words. 

What project are you working on now?

At the University of Arizona, I teach Borderlands writing courses for first-year students and I’ve been working on a Department of Education grant initiative called Project ADELANTE. The Borderlands classroom is some rich territory for dreaming up new and creative ideas! This year, I hope to participate, alongside my students, in various Borderlands genres including corridos, testimonios, fotonovelas, and more.  

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About the Author
Melani “Mele” Martinez is a senior lecturer at the University of Arizona, where she teaches writing courses. She earned a BA in creative writing at the University of Arizona and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Bacopa Literary Review, BorderLore, Bearings Online Journal,Telling Tongues: A Latin Anthology on Language Experiences, and Contemporary Chicanx Writers Anthology. Her family has lived in the Sonoran Desert for at least nine generations