The University of Arizona Press
October 3, 2024
Thank you to everyone who came out Tuesday night for the incredible discussion between Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, and Melani (Mele) Martinez, author of The Molino: A Memoir.
Below, check out some photos from the event:
Hosted in the University of Arizona’s Special Collections reading room, our audience was treated to a fascinating conversation between Tim and Mele, which was moderated by Javier D. Duran, Professor of Latin-American and Border Studies at the Center for Latin American Studies and the founding director of the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry under The Office of Research, Innovation, & Impact at the University of Arizona.
The authors discussed their creative processes, the challenges of writing in the memoir genre, and the way their work is in conversation with traditions both within and beyond Latinx literature. Afterwards, attendees got to chat with the authors and get their books signed.
Thank you to everyone for making this event truly special! Check out our website’s events page for information about the next opportunity to meet our wonderful authors.
About the books:
They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir
A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in this highly anticipated memoir, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together.
Hernandez’s mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed “a stunning piece of investigative journalism,” and the New York Times hailed as “painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendant of farmworkers.”
In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world.
They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man’s obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America’s past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.
Set in one of Tucson’s first tamal and tortilla factories, The Molino is a hybrid memoir that reckons with one family’s loss of home, food, and faith.
Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Melani 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.
The Molino is also Martinez’s personal story—that of a young Tucsonense coming of age in the 1980s and ’90s. As a young woman she rejects the work in her father’s popular kitchen, but when the business closes, her world shifts and the family disbands. When she finds her way back home, the tortillería’s iconic mural provides a gateway into history and ruin, ancestry and sacrifice, industrial myth and artistic incarnation—revealing a sacred presence still alive in Tucson.
A must-read for foodies, history lovers, and anyone searching for spiritual truth in the desert, this is a story of belonging and transformation in the borderlands.
