Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir [Paperback]

Alberto Alvaro Ríos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1999

Capirotada, Mexican bread pudding, is a mysterious mixture of prunes, peanuts, white bread, raisins, milk, quesadilla cheese, butter, cinnamon and cloves, Old World sugar--'all this' writes Alberto Rios, 'and things people will not tell you.'

Like its Mexican namesake, this memoir is a rich melange, stirring together Rios's memories of family, neighbors, friends, and secrets from his youth in the two Nogaleses--in Arizona and through the open gate into Mexico.

The vignettes in this memoir are not loud or fast. Yet like all of Rios's writing they are singular. Here is the story about a rickety magician, his chicken, and a group of little boys, but who plays a trick on whom? The story about the flying dancers and mortality. About going to the dentist in Mexico because it is cheaper, and maybe dangerous. About a British woman who sets out on a ship for America with the faith her Mexican GI will be waiting for her in Salt Lake City. And about the grown son who looks at his father and understands how he must provide for his own boy.

This book's uncommon offering is how it stops to address the quiet, the overlooked, the every day side of growing up. Capirotada is not about prison, or famous heroes. It is instead about the middle, which is often the most interesting place to find news.

Capirotada has been selected as the 2009 ONEBOOKAZ by the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A master of the coming-of-age story, R!os 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 R!os'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," R!os 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." The wall forms a dark subtext to this otherwise delightfully innocent memoir, which is magnified when R!os and his first grade "gang" rush home to take midday baths after the sewage treatment plant contaminates the town's one dry riverbed. Later, effluents from unregulated maquiladoras (foreign-owned factories) create a stream that can bleach blue jeans on contact. Now Nogales has the highest rate of lupus in the U.S. But R!os's memoir is not an environmental diatribe. Rather, it is an extremely personal family history filled with small anecdotes and finely drawn landscapes. As a literary autobiography, it is perhaps too true to its title (capirotada is a kind of catchall Mexican bread pudding): a collection of memories that fails to match the power of R!os's fiction. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Rios (Pig Cookies and Other Stories) is Regents Professor at Arizona State University and a native of Nogales, AZ. In this new book, he shares his experiences growing up in this small town on the Mexican border, where he learned to value the unique cultural mix of the area. Much like capirotadaAa Mexican bread pudding, made with lots of different ingredients and traditionally served at LentARios came of age among a mixture of peoples, ideas, and traditions in both his community and his family (his mother is from England, his father from Mexico). Finely crafted and emotionally powerful without being heavy-handed, this well-balanced narrative recalls the universal experiences of childhood and unique personal reminiscences of the author. For all collections, especially those with a regional emphasis.AGwen Gregory, New Mexico State Univ. Lib., Las Cruces
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 157 pages
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press (August 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826320945
• ISBN-13: 978-0826320940
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #523,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MOST ENCHANTING ACCOUNT OF GROWING UP IN A MULTI- HUED PLACE, March 10, 2000

By 

DIANE ELLIS (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (Paperback)

Sometimes you just want to read something that warms your heart. Something that is so rich and abundant with kindliness and warmth that you have to pause several times in your reading to ponder and absorb. The author must have been a very "nice boy." A nice boy with kaleidoscope vision and compassion.

Nothing fancy. Just plain home-cooking, albeit sometimes spicy, like the chilaquilas recipe in the book, which incidently, is wonderful!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Childhood Town, January 16, 2000

By 

"aniram1" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (Hardcover)

I have never read a book about my hometown. This book took me back to my childhood days, and what it meant to grow up in a border town where everyone knew each other, everyone was friendly, there was no racism and you could sleep with the door unlocked, leave your keys in the car and it was safe. It also brought sadness at the same time, since Nogales is not the same Nogales of the fifties, sixties, seventies and even part of the eighties. It has grown extensively, has crime, and is no longer the little friendly town I once knew and loved.

Albert was at Nogales High School at the same time as I. He has truly written a BEAUTIFUL memoir of what my little childhood town was.I knew his family, his father married my husband and I and his mom pierced my ears. I was saddened by the fact that his father had passed away,(since we moved to culture shock California 10 years ago,I don't have much contact with Nogalians). But, believe me,you don't have to be from Nogales to enjoy this little marvel of a book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Mexican Bread Pudding, November 29, 2011

By 

Simon Burrow "Persuader" (Pasadena CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (Paperback)

Capirotada is a special book. Its simplicity moved me and the small stories that it told helped me feel how Nogales was in the 1950's and 60's. I usually find memoirs to be too orderly for literature and to self-serving for nonfiction. This one is different. Rios's memoir is beautiful literature.

Alberto Rios writes in the same way that a great abstract painter paints. He draws an outline and leaves blank spaces. He admits that he doesn't know things. The pieces that he puts in are enough so that you can accept the unknowns and the uncertainties of his life or yours and just see enough of the picture so you can feel how it was without knowing everything.

Capirotada is brilliantly written book that is a marvelous tribute to his parents, to Nogales, and to immigrants everywhere.