麻豆影院

Writer Luis Urrea (MFA鈥�97) uses faith healers, fatal border crossings and his family to explore the bounds of human nature.

It was a routine afternoon in Tijuana during the winter of 1982, and听Luis Urrea听(MFA鈥�97) was deep into another day of relief work at the city dump. In a mountain of rotting garbage, orphaned children and wild dogs were fighting for turf. Nearby a colony of scavengers was digging for treasure, hoping to uncover its next meal.

Urrea鈥檚 old neighborhood was only minutes away, the place where he first heard the surreal tales about his great aunt Teresita Urrea, a faith healer and shaman sometimes known as the Mexican Joan of Arc. The rural road where his father was murdered unfolded in the distance.

鈥淚t was all too much,鈥欌�� says Urrea, a San Diego resident who had only returned home for a stint of volunteer work. 鈥淚 was surrounded by so much sorrow. I needed to get away. I needed a transcendent spot to write.鈥欌��

Urrea eventually found that spot in 麻豆影院 more than a decade later as a CU creative writing graduate student. Using Tijuana and the borderland as his themes, his elegant, evocative work at the university was a prelude to the international recognition and critical praise that soon followed.

In 1993 Urrea鈥檚 nonfiction debut,听Across the Wire听(Anchor), was a听New York Times听notable book of the year. His autobiographical听Nobody鈥檚 Son: Notes from an American Life听(University of Arizona Press)听won an American Book Award in 1999, and his chronicle of an illegal border crossing turned deadly,听The Devil鈥檚 Highway听(Back Bay Books), was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005. Urrea also received rave reviews for听The Hummingbird鈥檚 Daughter听(Back Bay Books), a novel about the life of his charismatic great aunt.

Today Urrea is a creative writing professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, travels widely for speaking engagements, recently finished his 14th book and can鈥檛 quite believe how his life turned out.

鈥淟uis Urrea writes about U.S.-Mexican border culture with a tragic and beautiful intimacy that has no equal,鈥欌�� Tom Montgomery-Fate of the听Boston Globe听wrote.

With light-colored hair, blue eyes and a pronounced surfer-dude drawl, Urrea hardly resembles a typical Mexican-born writer. But as the son of a Mexican father and American mother, he is the embodiment of the complex world he explores.

鈥淢y parents fought in their own 鈥榖order鈥� way, and I internalized it,鈥欌�� he says. 鈥淭he Mexican border is a metaphor. Borders everywhere are a symbol of what divides us. That鈥檚 what interests me.鈥�

A member of the Mexican presidential staff, Urrea鈥檚 father met his wife-to-be 鈥� a wayward New York society girl 鈥� during a state trip to San Francisco. The couple lived in Mexico City before moving to Tijuana to be near his family and start a new life.

鈥淗e told me [the government] asked him to perform a task that he couldn鈥檛 perform,鈥� Urrea says of his father leaving his work in the capital. 鈥淵ou can assume what it was. They must have wanted him to kill someone.鈥�

Urrea was born in Tijuana, but when he developed a severe case of tuberculosis four years later, the Urreas moved to a San Diego barrio, a mixed-race neighborhood that Urrea calls 鈥渟pooky.鈥欌��

鈥淢y parents fought in their own 鈥榖order鈥� way, and I internalized it.鈥欌��
鈥擫uis Urrea (MFA鈥�97)

鈥淭he black kids would beat me up for being white,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he Mexican kids would beat me up for being white. The white kids knew I was Mexican and wanted to beat me up.鈥�

To escape the violence, the Urreas moved to the San Diego suburb of Clairemont. At Clairemont High School, where filmmaker Cameron Crowe did undercover research for听Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Urrea says he was a dreamy kid, adrift but more comfortable than before.

But an ongoing battle was escalating in the Urrea home where his father hounded him to speak Spanish and his mother insisted he wasn鈥檛 Mexican. In an atmosphere of permanent unease, Urrea found a way to cope.

鈥淚 spent my allowance on books or records,鈥欌�� he says. 鈥淚 loved the arts.鈥欌��

After Urrea graduated from University of California, San Diego, his father withdrew his savings from a Tijuana bank so his son could attend graduate school. On his return trip his father 鈥渞an afoul of the Mexican police,鈥欌�� was pulled off the road and beaten to death, Urrea says.

鈥淚t sent me into a tailspin,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he tide of despair was overwhelming . . . for me and my mother.鈥欌��

For months Urrea slept on friends鈥� couches and ran through jobs, scrubbing toilets, baking doughnuts and manning the graveyard shift at a convenience store. At 23 he volunteered to work as a translator for a group of Baptist missionaries who served the poorest of the poor, the squatters who lived in Tijuana鈥檚 squalid city dump. Urrea left nothing to the imagination in听Across the Wire, a nonfiction account of the wretchedness.

鈥淥n one storm-ravaged day, the dump floods and the washing walls of water erode the surrounding banks,鈥欌�� he writes. 鈥淚mprovised children鈥檚 coffins, made of cardboard boxes, slide loose and break apart, and hungry seagulls pick away at the remains.鈥欌��

During the 1990s Urrea completed his nonfiction border trilogy:听Across the Wire,听By the Lake of Sleeping Children听(Anchor) and听Nobody鈥檚 Son. Although he said he had no intention of doing another border book, Urrea found himself drawn back in the wake of one of the deadliest border crossings in memory.

On a spring day in 2001, 26 Mexican men entered a no-man鈥檚 land known as the Devil鈥檚 Highway, a loose network of old cattle and wagon trails in southwestern Arizona located between Yuma and Tucson. The region is so deadly that even the U.S. Border Patrol is afraid to travel through it.

Only 12 of the men came back out. The rest suffered horrific deaths, baked alive in one of the most brutal and barren deserts on the continent. Published in 2005 during a time of heated national debate about illegal immigration, the book,听The Devil鈥檚 Highway, brought Urrea unprecedented attention.

In his riveting account, Urrea wrote, 鈥淭he dead . . . are stretched in angular poses, caught in last gasps or shouts, their eyes burned an eerie red by the sun . . . like wax-and-paper torsos in a gas station Dungeon of Terror.鈥欌��

A year later he published听The Hummingbird鈥檚 Daughter, a novel 20 years in the making. Urrea first immersed himself during graduate school in the story of Teresita Urrea, an uneducated, impoverished Indian girl born in 1873 to a 14-year-old Yaqui mother. When it became clear years later that the girl was gifted with the power to heal, thousands of pilgrims descended on her home, each drawn by their own political, cultural and social motives.

Denounced by the Catholic Church, Teresita, the 鈥淧eople鈥檚 Saint,鈥欌�� became a catalyst in the Mexican Revolution, used by the revolutionaries for their own political agenda. Mexican dictator General Porifirio Diaz called her the 鈥渕ost dangerous girl in Mexico.鈥�

When he finally sat down to write the book, however, Urrea couldn鈥檛 put himself inside the indigenous imagination. Only after conferring with听Linda Hogan听(MEngl鈥�78), a former CU-麻豆影院 faculty member and Native American author, could he really begin his story.

鈥淚 have always been amazed at the meaningful depth of Luis鈥� work and I think he is a writer whose time is here,鈥欌�� Hogan says.听 鈥淗is work has integrity, honesty. I remember him as a student being one of the most mature and wise of all, with a quick response to every wrong thing, righting it. He is a significant human being and writer.鈥�

Urrea owes his success, in part, to the community of writers he worked with on campus.

鈥淚 was very lucky because I think it was kind of a golden age in 麻豆影院,鈥欌�� says Urrea, who met Hogan at CU. 鈥淎 lot of great people came out of there when I was there. I think it changed me forever.鈥�