WHAT: Acclaimed author Luis Alberto Urrea speaks and reads for The Cabin's Readings and Conversations series.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
CONTACT: 331-8000.
With his blue eyes, sandy blond hair and persistent half-smile, Luis Alberto Urrea could be from anywhere, and the blood in his veins is as motley as his writing.
Born in Tijuana to a father from the Mexican state of Sinaloa and a mother from New York, his award-winning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays and short stories come from both sides of the border.
Urrea caught the world's eye in 1993 with the Christopher Award-winning "Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border." Seven years and six acclaimed books later, he was voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame.
His 2005 masterpiece, "The Devil's Highway," is based on the true tales of Mexican immigrants trying to cross the Arizona desert, and its mix of gruesome facts and graceful prose got it shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2006, Urrea completed 20 years of research and dreaming in "The Hummingbird's Daughter," a sweeping novel about his great aunt Teresita, an Indian girl who became "the mestiza Joan of Arc" in the politically and spiritually turbulent Mexico of the 1800s.
On Tuesday, Urrea will share his own story as part of The Cabin's Readings and Conversations series. His work speaks to all people, but The Cabin's managing director Ann Dehner said Hispanic readers have expressed particular excitement about Urrea's visit to Boise.
One of those people is Dunnia Aplicano, who will introduce Urrea before he takes the stage. Born in Honduras, she immigrated to the United States many years ago and has lived in Idaho for nearly half of her life. For the last decade, she has been state monitor advocate for the Department of Labor, where she speaks for farmworkers and their rights. This experience coupled with her own cultural duality made her feel close to Urrea's work, even something as disturbing as "The Devil's Highway."
"In the Hispanic or Latino community in Idaho, there are as varied opinions and feelings as there are in the larger, overall community, depending on your own life experiences, where you are in life and how much you know about the lives of immigrants. Globally, and I speak from the point of view of someone raised in a Third-World country, most people understand the personal reasons why immigrants risk their lives crossing the desert," she said. "This book, however, can be an educational tool to help readers glimpse the big picture. I know that it helped me."
Aplicano referred to what so many reviewers have said of Urrea - that he is able to bridge the gaps between people and ideologies by telling good stories, from whimsical to terrifying. Through his unique perspective and skill with the written word, he is able to put heated issues in a context that is as accessible as it is moving.
"I can only remember one other book that has affected me in a similar way, "Night," by Elie Wiesel," Aplicano said. "I still remember specific passages, and after more than five years it has not left me. In the same way, "The Devil's Highway" has caused me sleepless nights and images that I am afraid will be everlasting. This book has hit close to home in my work and personal life."
Dora Ramirez-Dhoore is eager to see how Urrea will affect her students, both when they finish "The Hummingbird's Daughter" and when they meet its author face to face. She teaches a variety of classes at Boise State University, including Chicano literature, and The Cabin is making it possible for Urrea to meet with her students and several other English classes on Wednesday. Ramirez-Dhoore is thrilled that they will have access to such a talented writer, one with whom she shares mixed heritage.
"My dad was born in Texas and my mom on other side of border. To me it's the same place," she said.
Growing up as a farmworker in Nyssa, Ore., she remembers learning to tell time by the sun and realizing that she wanted a very different life. She went on to get a doctorate in ethnic literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and one of the books she taught to freshmen as a graduate student was Urrea's "Across the Wire."
"It was just so real. It made me laugh; it made me cry. It's amazing," she said.
She talked about "The Borderlands," by Gloria Anzaldua, a foundational text that expresses the idea of "carrying the border in your body." She sees the same expression of identity in Urrea's writing, a similar mix of personal narrative, history and theory.
When asked if being a Hispanic author brings with it the expectation of ethnic themes, she referred to the Harlem Renaissance and the dictum that good writing always uplifted the race. She said writers often struggle with being authentic and pleasing editors' concepts of social relevance, but their life experience is a silent, constant influence. Urrea is one who knows how to use it.
"His nonfiction is so true, in the economic issues of the border as well as humanizing those economic issues. In fictional texts like "The Hummingbird's Daughter," this is so complex it's just like a life," Ramirez-Dhoore said. "You can pull out all of those issues or you can just read it as a life. It's the first book I've read in a while that has made me dream."
It also has made her think even more deeply about the connections between Mexican and U.S. history and to be more conscious of the assumptions people make about what Mexico is. There is enough interest in the subject at Boise State to warrant a new minor in Latin American and Latino/Latina Studies, and Ramirez-Dhoore is on the committee developing the curriculum. With the help of Brian Wampler, an assistant professor of political science, she contacted The Cabin and got a green light on bringing Urrea to campus. Most of her students are still in the process of discovering his work, but Ramirez-Dhoore hopes they and attendees of Readings and Conversations will at least ask him about the writing process if not the demands of being a voice for a complicated population.
"People could really learn a lot about what's going on on the border. Instead of making blanket statements, he looks at it from experience. And his fiction is so intricate and beautifully written that even if they don't know the history they're going to love the story," she said, pointing again to "The Hummingbird's Daughter." "I'm interested in how he placed Teresita within the history of that time period and how her mixed heritage gave her access and perhaps gave him access to write about a variety of subjects from different viewpoints but from within one body - that ability to cross back and forth between two worlds."
Erin Ryan: 672-6732
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