Luis Urrea Celebrates Dia de los Muertos

From Hopeless Situations, Miracles Happen

Before Luis Urrea’s reading, there was a Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos event in the UA Bookstore, MC’d by my academic-compa Kathryn Ortiz. The event included altars from Dr. Cintli’s upper-division Mexican American Studies students, a mariachi performance by an elementary school group, and a folklorico dance put on by UA’s ballet folklorico group.

I had the chance to speak with Urrea—he signed my copy of The Devil's Highway and I apologized that there were notes I’d taken inside of it, but I explained that I’d taken part in the summer Banned Book club. He then recounted when he had first heard of the proposed book ban years ago when a news reporter asked him about Tom Horne's desire to ban Ethnic Studies, and Urrea's complete disbelief.

Urrea began by professing to be a “proud veteran of Mexican American Studies.” He commented that in California, where he studied, they don’t experience the same scrutiny as in Arizona, but the MAS program he participated in produced “countless authors, PhDs and scholars.”

He read from Nobody's Son , which was published by UA Press, so he was bringing it home to read. Urrea explained that while he lived for some time in Tucson, he was nomadic enough that he was leary to talk about Arizona or on behalf of Arizona, though Arizona gave him his “best books.”

On the Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos when honoring ancestors, he remembered all of the people who have gone before him: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and several of his nephews and cousins who were gone—and he’d be damned if someone regarded any of them as less than human, or stopped them in the street to question them about their citizenship, or tell them that they couldn’t study about their culture.

From Nobody's Son , Urrea read a passage about moving from Tijuana as a child with skin problems and had no place to go while his parents worked, and being raised in the home of two of his female relatives who he described in rich and humorous detail. 

Urrea described the time as hopeless, however adding that when the  “situation was hopeless, that’s when miracles happen.”

He explained the differences in the worlds of his home and that of the relatives who cared for him, watched La Jesse in their soap operas, and made tortillas by hand. In the description of these homes and love, Urrea explained that there was a particular “way a family shares one bathroom that says love.”

Read my past post on Urrea: http://writerscholarprofessional.blogspot.com/2012/05/luis-alberto-urrea-addresses-tucson-ban.html

Luis Alberto Urrea Addresses Tucson Ban of Books

They Don't Gotta Burn a Book/They Just Remove Them
Just before the 30 minute mark, Bill Moyer asks Luis Alberto Urrea about the removal of his books from Ethnic Studies classes. Urrea responds that he initially thought it was a joke when he was first informed about the ban, and then he came to understand that the ban was a removal of "books from brown hands."



In the Moyer interview, Urrea goes on to say, "It's not about books. It's about ethnicity. It's about power in Phoenix."
 
When Urrea spoke at the UA at the '11 Tucson Festival of Books, I had the chance to see him and wrote a bit about that I draw from below:

On  Friday, March 11th 2011, Marissa Juarez, Aja Martinez and I attended a reading by Luis Alberto Urrea (http://www.luisurrea.com/home.php), organized by Kathryn Ortiz. Urrea, author of Into the Beautiful North, The Devil's Highway and The Hummingbird's Daughter, spoke as a part of the UA Reads Program (http://www.uofabookstores.com/uaz/UAReads/default.asp), which Kathryn Ortiz coordinates as a Graduate Assistant for the University of Arizona’s campus bookstore. 

Born in Tijuana, Mexico, Urrea explained a lot of his fiction has been heavily influenced by friends, family and colleagues. While working in the Tijuana dump, Urrea came into contact with humble characters whose lives taught Urrea about genuine community. While he was looking for a job away from the dump, Urrea wrote a letter to a former writing instructor, asking if he could help him find a job as a janitor. The writing instructor responded with an opportunity to teach writing.

Urrea said that he always entered into the writing process with the strategy of demonstrating his love for his characters. However, he remains critical of nationalist messages he hears traveling in Mexico about Honduran immigrants. Listening to talk radio in Mexico, Urrea criticized those who spread anti-immigrant rhetoric like Spanish-speaking versions of Bill O’Reily.

   

Urrea also spoke of his own connection with Tucson, living off minute rice and hot sauce at the time he met his wife. She interviewed him while reporting for a local paper. Offering advice to writers, Urrea recommended using librarians as the heroes because every librarian will order the book. Similarly, Urrea made the point that more writers should have female heroes because there are already endless numbers of male heroes “from Beowolf to Mad Max.”