MELANI "MELE" MARTINEZ

THE MOLINO: A MEMOIR

(FORTHCOMING 2024)

 Set in one of Tucson’s first tamal and tortilla factories, The Molino is a hybrid memoir exploring one family’s loss of home, food, and faith. A young woman rejects the work in her father’s popular kitchen, but when the business must close, her world shifts and the family disbands. When she comes home, the factory’s scandalous mural provides a gateway into history and ruin, ancestry and sacrifice, industrial myth and artistic incarnation—revealing a sacred presence still alive in Tucson.