Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction
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Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction

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4.28 of 5 stars 4.28  ·  rating details  ·  54 ratings  ·  8 reviews
"Home isn't just a place, it is also a language."Born in Tijuana, the son of an Anglo woman and a Mexican father, Urrea says that "Home isn't just a place, it is also a language." In these six stories—each wandering beneath different kinds of sky, from the thick Mazatlan starry night to the wide open spaces of the Sioux Nation in South Dakota—Urrea maps...more
Paperback, 160 pages
Published February 1st 2002 by Cinco Puntos Press
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Wade
Wade rated it 5 of 5 stars
This collection reminds me that one of my favorite genres is farce. When it's done well, farce makes you laugh at the situations without turning away from the hard realities it describes. This book does that - makes me laugh and almost cry at the same time. While I don't know much about the realities of Mexican-US border life, I suspect that the underlying realities that Urrea describes are actually as stark and unjust, even if the actual people are not as broadly drawn, as slapstick, as he writ...more
Les
Les rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Les by: Me?
4.5+

I love Urrea's writing and will be reading more by him very soon. This is one of my favorite collections of short stories ever. There is a GGMarquez-esque magically real story and the other five are realistic, poetic, brilliant, and wonderful. I am not often a fan of short stories because I do not like to invest time in a world that will end so quickly. In these stories, Urrea creates worlds that exist on their own, suck you in, and continue to grow despite the relatively few pages...more
Kalen
Kalen rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: 2010-reads
I never thought a volume of short stories could move me as much as this did. Brilliant through-and-through. A Day in the Life and Father Returns from the Mountain are particularly powerful. Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter is big and epic but he's proven he can handle the short form just as deftly. I've got a library book right now and will be ordering this one because it needs to be on my bookshelf.
Red
Red rated it 4 of 5 stars
Six poetic, poignant short stories that knock you down, wring you out, and stand you back up again.
Dave
Dave rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: shortfiction
Urrea is truly a master of voice. The characters of his fiction are distinct and convincing (even the characters in the magical realism inflected first story seemed startlingly authentic). Each one of the six pieces in this collection seems to deal with 'home' or 'place' and the effort it takes to travel to it or escape from it (and even what 'it' really is).
Caroline
six short stories. a bit uneven, but full of honest, eloquent turns around outcasts and generally underrepresented characters. this one's not for kids. and it's a fast read.
meg
meg rated it 5 of 5 stars
a really, really excellent collection. maybe one of my favorite books ever.
J.L.
J.L. rated it 5 of 5 stars
I love Luis Urrea, what can I say. One of my favorite authors.
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Luis Alberto Urrea is the award-winning author of 13 books, including The Hummingbird's Daughter, The Devil's Highway and Into the Beautiful North (May 2009). Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Luis has used the theme of borders, immigration and search for love and belonging throughout his work. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 (nonfiction), he's won the Kiriyama Prize (2006...more
More about Luis Alberto Urrea...
The Hummingbird's Daughter The Devil's Highway: A True Story Into the Beautiful North Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border By the Lake of Sleeping Children

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“Even if, at the moment, you can't sit down and do the gruntwork of stringing verbs and nouns together, you are writing. It is a way of seeing, a way of being. The world is not only the world, but your personal filing cabinet. You lodge details of the world in your sparkling nerve-library that spirals through your brain and coils down your arms and legs, collects in your belly and your sex. You write, even if you can't always "write."
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