The University of Arizona Press
Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Time: 6–8 p.m., AZT
Where: Special Collections Reading Room, University of Arizona Libraries, 1510 E. University Blvd.
The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and available first-come, first-served. Click here for more information.
Join us to celebrate two new books from the borderlands—They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir by Tim Z. Hernandez and The Molino: A Memoir by Melani Martinez. The two authors will read from their books and discuss common themes. Both books document a lost history through the haunting, other-worldly voices calling us to remember, search, uncover, and restore the authors’ place and impact—their essential belonging—as descendants of farm and food workers and in the vast Borderlands.
The discussion will be 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.
A book signing and reception will follow the discussion with books available for purchase while supplies last. The event is sponsored and supported by The University of Arizona Press, the University Libraries Special Collections, the Southwest Center, and the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry.
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.
