Companion to El caballo en la cocina: Las historias de una familia mexicana-americana
Born in 1908, two years before the start of the Mexican Revolution, Rafael lives in the village of San Cristóbal, in northern Sonora, Mexico, where his father, the village comisario, owns a bar, pool hall, and grocery store. This is a ranching town where vaqueros are heroes, and horses and bulls, as well as coyotes and rattlesnakes, provide thrills and teach lessons that Rafael and his brothers will never forget. The boy’s earliest memories are of mounted revolutionaries riding through town and commandeering horses for Pancho Villa’s campesino army. When his parents lose their life savings in the revolution, the family crosses the border to Arizona. Life in the north is a struggle, and young Rafael must put aside his dreams of education and work with his brothers picking lettuce wherever laborers are needed.
Based on the boyhood of the author’s father, these vivid stories are touching, funny, and often heart breaking. Those of the Mexican Revolution offer a window into worlds that twenty first-century Americans have never known, though the immigrant experience is universal. The late Rudolfo Anaya said in regard to Ralph’s writing, “I’ve always been a fan. Now let’s get NM to read Ralph” (2019). This reissue of this 5×9 version in English is offered in that spirit.
Doing Nothing: Poems before the Pandemic
January 2022
is now live on Amazon. Kindle version available soon.
Posthumous poems written and collected over a lifetime by the author of The Horse in the Kitchen, El caballo en la cocina, Tales from La Perla, and The Illustrated Fractured Fables. Ella Brown’s drawings depict landscapes associated with the poems. When you get to Amazon, in the search bar type in Ralph M. Flores Doing Nothing or try this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733441948/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25E58VLTQRWP5&keywords=Ralph+M.+Flores+Doing+Nothing&qid=1642919167&sprefix=ralph+m.+flores+doing+not%2Caps%2C1560&sr=8-1
Ralph M. Flores books 