Urrea’s latest work brings notice to author known as literary conscience of the border
Luis Alberto Urrea is about to become, finally, arguably, after decades of books and trails of critical hosannas, a major figure. As in, a household name.
Urrea looked into the bookshelves of his Naperville, Ill., home and said that his new book, “The House of Broken Angels,” a multigenerational saga about a Mexican-American family quite similar to his own, was his go-for-broke attempt to stand alongside his heroes. He nodded at Twain, he mumbled Steinbeck (whose work his veers closer to), then said that he would likely fail, but he wanted, for a moment, “to just exist in that same arena.”
Which sounded disingenuous, considering the collection of literary awards, the stately pyramids and globes and large heavy medals, residing behind glass in the next room.
(Urrea will headline the Spring Literary Luncheon, the Friends of Milwaukee Public Library’s biggest annual fundraising event, on May 11.)
Still, if any author looks due for next level-dom, it’s Urrea.
The problem is, where do you begin with this guy?
With the sprawling historical fiction? Or the journalism, poetry, memoirs? The ballet? Worse, in telling Urrea’s own story, where do you start? And stop? A day earlier, in a studio at WBEZ-FM on Navy Pier, Urrea was taping the NPR show “Fresh Air,” and host Terry Gross, whose cool, soft voice came through headphones from her studio in Philadelphia, sounded exasperated with their limited time. They had talked for 90 minutes (which would be edited later into an hourlong interview) and the moment they were finished, off the air, Gross blurted: “Oh, your life has just been too eventful!”
Urrea, 62, rocked backward in his chair, delighted.
Indeed, the story of Luis Alberto Urrea itself has a whiff of folk tale. He is a lot like his best-sellers, an epic mix of ancient and contemporary, a touch of magic realism here, a chunk of painful reality there, yet approachable, warm, not prone to literary pretense. (The Chinese-American family novels of Amy Tan, a friend of Urrea’s, is a fair approximation.) His Mexico, similarly, is not the monolith of political rhetoric, but generationally and ethnically diverse. Urrea himself has blond hair, blue eyes — his grandmother was named Guadalupe Murray.
His first books, which he has called “The Border Trilogy,” were memoirs, stories of his own life growing up on the border. There is too much history here, funny, scary, random: His father, beloved in the Mexican government, had the license plate “MEXICO 2.” As a child, Urrea had teeth drilled without Novocaine as a dentist swore in his face. He once took science fiction legend Ursula K. Le Guin to see “Star Wars.” He had an aunt who became the national bowling champion of Mexico. He cleaned toilets for a living, made doughnuts, was a cartoonist for a nudie rag.
A son of the border
Urrea is the literary conscience of the border.
“The Devil’s Highway,” his disturbing, humane 2004 nonfiction account of the struggle for survival among 26 men crossing the border in 2001, a Pulitzer finalist (and his biggest seller so far), is headed into a 23rd printing. But most of his novels — and much of his work — addresses the relationship of working-class Mexicans with borders, real and metaphorical. Even “House of Broken Angels” — set in San Diego, and not a border tale — is full of characters marked by it, including a U.S. veteran without citizenship.
It was only “eerie coincidence” the book was released the day after the Trump administration had planned to rescind the DACA program for young undocumented immigrants, said Ben George, senior editor at Little, Brown. “But I do think because of this administration, there is an urgency, so it’s become the right moment for the book.”
Urrea was born in Tijuana in 1955, into severe poverty.
His father, a personal assistant to the vice president of Mexico, and a military man, had fallen from favor; Urrea says his father refused to assassinate someone. His mother, a Staten Island native, served in the Red Cross during World War II; she took part in the Battle of the Bulge and returned with post-traumatic stress disorder and severe injuries. Her family owned an antique store in Manhattan; Albert Einstein was a regular. The Mexican side was stranger: Urrea had a spiritualist grandfather, and a great aunt, Teresita Urrea, “the Saint of Cabora,” “the Mexican Joan of Arc,” celebrated for her supposedly healing powers; she became the basis for his 2005 best-seller “The Hummingbird’s Daughter.”
He says “House of Broken Angels” — largely inspired by an older brother who, before he died of cancer, had a vast, melancholy birthday party in his final days — will be his “farewell to the border.” His next book is inspired by his mother’s Red Cross service. “Luis chafes at being placed in an ethnic box,” Cindy said. “He wants to pull people up, but everyone wants him to be their Mexican, explain Mexico, the border, and Luis — Luis just wants to be Mark Twain.”