The story of the author

A life shaped by advocacy, ancestry, and memory.

Salomón Quintero's path to becoming an author began long before he wrote his first novel—with questions of identity raised during a transformative era.

1965–1969

Finding identity in a movement.

Salomón arrived at UC Berkeley drawn equally to literature and the protest movement taking root there. He helped form the Mexican American Student Confederation, joined the 1968 grape-boycott sit-in at the university president's office, and spent a week in Santa Rita Jail. The following year, he helped form the Third World Liberation Front in the campaign to establish Ethnic Studies at Berkeley. The questions raised in those years—Who tells our story? Which histories survive?—would remain with him for decades.

45 years

A career grounded in service.

A graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law, Salomón practiced in San Mateo County for forty-five years. Judges, mediators, clerks, and fellow attorneys knew him as a “lawyer's lawyer,” valued for substance, integrity, and unwavering commitment to the people he served.

Since 2016

Returning to the ancestral record.

In retirement, he immersed himself in Mexica cosmology, codices, ritual art, and the social structures of Aztec society. What began as study became a historically grounded effort to understand Indigenous life before the arrival of Europeans—from within its own worldview.

The novel

Challenging a static view of history.

Flight of the Hummingbird grew in part from a conversation with an archaeologist who described Aztec social structure as static. Salomón's research led him elsewhere: talent found openings, people sought achievement and prestige, and exceptions existed within every rule. The resulting four-generation family saga presents a civilization centered not only on conflict, but on beauty, poetry, discipline, craft, ambition, family, and communal responsibility.

“Historical narratives shape self-esteem, belonging, and intergenerational memory.”

Salomón Quintero

Enter the world of Flight of the Hummingbird.

Explore the book →