Capirotada

University of New Mexico Press • 1999

"A master of the coming-of-age story, Ríos is the author of several short story collections (The Iguana Killer, etc.). Fans of his fiction will recognize the origins of numerous stories in this short memoir of growing up in a small Arizona border town. The Nogales of Ríos's childhood shared a virtually open border with Nogales, Mexico: business was conducted casually between the two towns and playmates wandered back and forth. Now there is a solid steel wall separating the communities. 'This is not the border,' Ríos writes. 'It's something else, something underscoring the difference between danger and grace, which is not something that separates people. It's something that joins them, as they face the same border.'" — Publishers Weekly