{"id":15755,"date":"2011-12-05T08:47:34","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T12:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=15755"},"modified":"2015-08-17T09:56:33","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T13:56:33","slug":"author-interview-luis-alberto-urrea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/author-interview-luis-alberto-urrea\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Interview: Luis Alberto Urrea [in Bookslut]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Luis<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier this year at that sprawling, unnavigable, kvetchfest\u00a0known as AWP<\/a> \u2013\u00a0the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs<\/a> \u2013\u00a0I got to introduce and moderate the very best panel of the long weekend (the title alone was the most memorable: “I Am Not a Terrorist: The Political Writer”<\/a>), which included Luis Alberto\u00a0Urrea. Of course, I ended up mispronouncing his first name\u00a0\u2013\u00a0it’s Loo-ees, not Loo-isss \u2013\u00a0even though I knew so much better as I had just finished his addictive, disturbing three-part memoir known as the Border Trilogy,\u00a0Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1993),\u00a0<\/em>By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(1996), and\u00a0Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1998), about being born and raised in Tijuana \u2013\u00a0the blonde and blue-eyed son of a Mexican father and an American mother \u2013\u00a0and the desperate work he later did as a young missionary amidst the Tijuana garbage dumps. He writes expressively, specifically about his name in\u00a0Nobody’s Son\u00a0<\/em>… and I had to bungle it. Still, he merely graciously raised an eyebrow.\u00a0Gawww.<\/p>\n

Had I not been asked to participate on that panel, I might never have discovered\u00a0Urrea, a multi-faceted poet-novelist-investigative journalist with many more books to his name. In the months since my nomenclature debacle, I’ve gladly done my penance by reading all but two of\u00a0Urrea’s\u00a0titles (which remain high on the must-read pile). His displays of literary versatility include his 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist nod<\/a> for his epic work\u00a0The Devil’s Highway<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2004), about a brutal border crossing in 2001 that went wrong, to his lighthearted novel\u00a0Into the Beautiful North<\/a> (<\/em>2009), to his collaborative forays into the graphic novel with\u00a0Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2010) and poetry set to photographs with\u00a0Vatos<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(2000).<\/p>\n

I confess my literary heart beats fastest for\u00a0The Hummingbird’s Daughter<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2005),\u00a0Urrea’s\u00a0magnificent tome about a distant relative: “TERESA URREA WAS A REAL PERSON,” he writes in capitals in his author’s note. Although\u00a0Urrea\u00a0grew up believing she was his great-aunt, he would eventually learn that Teresa’s father was the first cousin of\u00a0Urrea’s\u00a0great-grandfather.\u00a0As epic as Teresa’s story is, so, too, is\u00a0Urrea’s\u00a0goliath effort that lasted some twenty years to recreate his legendary ancestor on the printed page.<\/p>\n

Born during the last decades of the nineteenth century to a 14-year-old servant impregnated by a wealthy philandering rancher, Don\u00a0Tom\u00e1s\u00a0Urrea, Teresa is raised by Huila, a revered midwife and potent healer. As a teenager,\u00a0Teresa is finally recognized by her father as his daughter, and she is duly trained in the ways of a proper young lady. When violence strikes Teresa’s young life, she reawakens with the power to heal. Her reputation grows as the Santa de\u00a0Cabora, and as the pilgrims multiply seeking her wisdom and miracles, the nervous Mexican military accuses Teresa and\u00a0Tom\u00e1s\u00a0of inciting seditious activities against the government. By novel’s end, father and daughter escape to the new world up north to start their lives anew…<\/p>\n

Six years later, the Santa de\u00a0Cabora’s\u00a0story resumes with\u00a0Queen of America<\/em>. If glowing starred advance reviews are any indication, copies of the sequel should be flying off the shelves right about now. Father and daughter cross the border into the U.S. fleeing the Mexican officials, but the tenacious assassins and the endless followers prove more difficult to outrun. As Teresa grows exhausted administering to the troubled and diseased,\u00a0Tom\u00e1s\u00a0is merely weary with their peripatetic existence. He finally insists on putting down stakes and establishes his northern homestead far away from the detractors and the damaged. Teresa is not so easily contented even after the family is reunited\u00a0el\u00a0norte<\/em>… and a doomed, violent love affair sets in motion her new life as a traveling saint across all of waiting America. Let the mythic journey commence.<\/p>\n

How did you “meet” your Great-Aunt Teresa? Did you always know this historical, mystical figure was your relative?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>
\nI first heard about her in family stories in Tijuana when I was a little guy. But you have to understand that my family was prone to bullshit. They were fabulous, to put it politely, but they were also given to making up unbelievable whoppers at any second. Within that matrix, I heard this story of an aunt who could fly, talk to spirits, raise the dead \u2013\u00a0part of me believed because I was a gullible little kid, but some part of me knew better. But she kept resurfacing. During my boyhood going back and forth over the border, whenever I came back to Tijuana, stories about my great-aunt would come back, but I just blew them off.<\/p>\n

Then I began working in the Chicano Studies department at [University of California] San Diego, and found out she was real person! It was 1978, and I found her in a chapter of Carey McWilliams’s book,\u00a0North from Mexico: The Spanish Speaking People of the United States<\/em>. My relatives hadn’t realized anything had ever been written about her. That she had historical weight was a total shock. I didn’t do anything then, I just knew I had this information. But as soon as I started reading more things about her, really weird things began to happen to me. Suddenly people I didn’t know wanted to talk to me about her. These desert types \u2013\u00a0the kind I just assumed ate peyote, saw visions \u2013\u00a0had stories to share with me.<\/p>\n

Then in 1985 when I was living in Boston, I discovered that\u00a0Teresita’s\u00a0story was actually very well documented. And that’s when I began collecting those stories as a hobby. [… click here for more<\/a>]\n

Author interview<\/strong>: Feature: \u201cAn Interview with Luis Alberto Urrea,\u201d Bookslut.com, December 2011<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year at that sprawling, unnavigable, kvetchfest\u00a0known as AWP \u2013\u00a0the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs \u2013\u00a0I got to introduce and moderate the very best panel of the long weekend (the title alone was the most memorable: “I Am Not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,199,6535],"tags":[83,6608,33,10,24,25,13,1884,129,39,2352],"class_list":["post-15755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-fiction","category-latinaox","category-repost","tag-assimilation","tag-bookdragon","tag-bookslut","tag-family","tag-historical","tag-immigration","tag-love","tag-luis-alberto-urrea","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-queen-of-america"],"yoast_head":"\nAuthor Interview: Luis Alberto Urrea [in Bookslut] - 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