D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March
2009
Detouring Off the Devil's Highway
Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter and The Devil's Highway, kicks off Silver City's Big Read on March 15.
By Jeff Berg
Luis Alberto Urrea's published works, like his heritage, straddle an invisible border. His writings include several nonfiction books about living on or crossing the border, as well as poetry. More recently he has turned to fiction, and has a new graphic novel about to be added to his bibliography.
 |
Luis Alberto Urrea will be featured
at Literacy Alive Day, March 15, which will also serve as the kickoff
event for the Big Read, planned for April. |
One of his more recent and perhaps his most successful volumes is a novel called The Hummingbird's Daughter. It was successful enough that Urrea is now working on a sequel (with the working title The Queen of America), while watching the preparations for a movie to be shot this fall based on the first book. The film will star Antonio Banderas.
His best-known nonfiction work may be the outstanding Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Devil's Highway, published in 2004. A movie version of that book is also said to be in the early stages of development by a Tucson filmmaker.
When Rudolfo Anaya, the celebrated New Mexico novelist, learned that Urrea would be the speaker for the Silver City Friends of the Library's "Literacy Alive Day" on March 15, he told the group, "I can't believe you landed Luis Urrea. He is probably the best Chicano/Latino writer writing today. And he is a fabulous presenter. Wish I were there to hear him."
Urrea's presentation, from 2-5 p.m. at the WNMU Global Resource Center, also serves as a kickoff event for the Friends of the Library's "Big Read," planned for April. The novel at the center of that month-long town-wide reading event will be Bless Me, Ultima — by none other than Rudolfo Anaya.
Born in Tijuana, to an American mother and Mexican father, Urrea now lives in Illinois, about an hour from Chicago, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago. But he still maintains a strong and deep connection with the Southwest.
"I came to Illinois 10 years ago, when I was offered tenure," he says. "I was going to spend a year in Chicago, and then go home, but that hasn't quite happened yet."
He is a frequent visitor to New Mexico, and has been a guest at the Border Book Festival in Mesilla several times.
"My first attraction to New Mexico was a kind of 'soul flash.' It was a mystical attachment for me, and then I read a number of New Mexico based books, such as Red Sky at Morning (Richard Bradford) and Bless Me Ultima," Urrea says. "Later I got to know Rudy (Anaya), and New Mexico became a home away from home, as I really connected to the land."
The Literacy Alive Day event will coincide with the release of a new book by Urrea, with a second due out soon after. Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush is Urrea's first venture into the world of graphic novels. Illustrated by Christopher Cardinale, a former resident of New Mexico, the story takes place in the "green, wet, mango-sweet Mexican village of Rosario, where dead corpses rise up out of cathedral walls; where vast silver mines beneath the town occasionally collapse, causing a whole section of the village to drop out of sight." The book-length comic book for all ages tells the story of Mr. Mendoza, who "wields his paintbrush as the town's self-appointed conscience." Urrea notes in the publisher's synopsis that the story is not magic realism, but rather "it's simply how kids grow up in Mexico. Especially if you're a boy."
Describing his other soon-to-be-published book, a novel entitled Into the Beautiful North, Urrea says with a laugh, "It's The Magnificent Seven for women."
The novel is about Nayeli, who lives in Mexico. Since her father and most of the other men of her village have all gone to el Norte to find work, men folks are few and far between. One day, while watching the classic western movie, The Magnificent Seven, she decides to go north herself to find seven men who will help protect and repopulate her community.
Urrea, who has just returned from the road after a series of readings and lectures, will be hitting the road again for a book tour for Into the Beautiful North, which will be published in May by Little, Brown.
The Hummingbird's Daughter, Urrea's most recently published book until now, took more than 20 years to research and get into print. It tells the story of a fabled great aunt of the author's, Teresa Urrea, who was known as the Saint of Cabora.
While doing the research for the book, he met and interviewed numerous people who had stories of Teresa, and even now he finds that people are still offering tidbits of information about her.
"One weird thing because of Hummingbird's Daughter is that I have stayed connected with people who keep in touch with me," he says. "They show me documents and things that always amaze me."
A recent discovery was of a house in El Paso where Teresa once lived.
Urrea also remains in touch with border issues, but — like his friend and fellow border writer, the iconic Charles Bowden of Tucson — he says he's not ready to write more about the border and the problems connected with it.
"When I did Devil's Highway, I developed a nice working relationship with the Border Patrol," Urrea says. "They sometimes will contact me to see if I want to work with them again, and I tell them that I don't want to do that now — been there, done that."
He does feel that someone needs to write about the real story of the narcotics war in Mexico and the "narco-terror" that accompanies it. Just this year, as of mid-February, 230 murders had occurred in Juarez; on Feb. 11 alone, 25 people were murdered in the state of Chihuahua, which includes Juarez.
"It's an insane amount of violence now," Urrea says. "I have heard that a battalion of soldiers were being moved to the Laredo area. There is a real fear of insurrection in Mexico now. The crossings coming north have increased by 68 percent recently."
But for now, Urrea's current books offer a temperate respite from such madness, both for himself and the reader. His recent novels seem to blend a touch of magic with history, real emotional content and realism.
A soul flash, if you will.
Luis Alberto Urrea will be the guest speaker for "Literacy Alive Day" at the WNMU Global Resource Center, 2-5 p.m., on Saturday, March 15, followed by a book signing and reception. Tickets are $8 for Friends of the Library members and seniors, $10 for other adults ad $5 for students; ages 12 and under admitted free. Buy tickets at the door, at the Silver City Public Library or Silver City Museum, or by mail: FOL, PO Box 5098, Silver City, NM 88062. A fundraising dinner will follow at 6:30 p.m. at the Silver City Museum; tickets, $50 per plate, include admission to the Literacy Alive event. On March 16, Urrea will take part in a panel discussion at WNMU from 9:30 a.m. to noon on the topic of "Chicano Life and Literature." For more information check the Friends of the Library- Silver City Website, at www.fol-silvercity.com
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