Luis Alberto Urrea's Blog, page 26
July 30, 2011
Sketchbook Saturday
While I was working on my writing chops, I was also doing some art on the side. This pencil drawing was done for the Chicano Studies Dept. of San Diego Mesa College. For those of you with an Aztec/Nahuatl cosmology, the flower has several meanings (the petals are notched tongues, which denotes -- among other things -- poetry). It graced several posters and publications and remains one of my favorites.
Tags: Sketchbook Saturday
July 28, 2011
Meet Carol's Book Club!
Just had an awesome Skype session about Into the Beautiful North with the lovely ladies of Carol Moore's book club in San Juan Capistrano. Carol (who is peeking in from the right hand side of the screen, went to Clairemont High School with me. Back in the day, we rode the homecoming float dressed in togas!
News re: One Book, One San Diego
I wanted to thank all of you for your support in the One Book, One San Diego competition. Because of you, Into the Beautiful North leads my worthy competition by nearly 1100 votes (as of this posting). However, changes are afoot. Below is a statement I sent to the organizers tonight. You have been so great, I wanted you to be the first to know.
Loyally, Luis
It was an honor for me to be nominated for One Book One San Diego for Into the Beautiful North, a book that was partially written as a thank-you to San Diego for inspiring so much of my career. And I deeply appreciate the enthusiasm and support of San Diego's librarians, booksellers and readers. You made my book your choice by a wide margin and I will always be honored. However, the organizers of One Book One San Diego have made abrupt changes in the program and the dates. This has proven to be unworkable for me and I regretfully withdraw from the One Book One San Diego program.
After being involved in over thirty One Book programs, you can imagine how much it meant to me to have the opportunity to take part in my hometown's event. I am disappointed, but hopeful the San Diego reading community will enjoy the literary celebration they deserve and continue to support the other nominees.
I am so deeply honored by the readers and fans who supported Into the Beautiful North and voted so enthusiastically. I heard from huge numbers of Latino readers, grade school, high school and college alumna, and dozens of book clubs. Thank you! My family and friends in San Diego were great cheerleaders for One Book One San Diego and asked their friends and family to support my book. I know there were voting blocks from the Coast Guard and Navy bases and I couldn't be prouder to have their support. I was encouraged by organizers to "campaign" for votes to help publicize the contest and I was moved by the enthusiastic support for all of the authors.
I am looking forward to coming back to San Diego on book tour later this year and sharing with you my new novel, Queen of America. It's been a while since I've been back in town and I promise, we will have an amazing time. I am excited to see all of you then and to introduce you to the next chapter. I hope this too-brief visit will serve to honor those who voted for me as well.
Thanks again—Hasta la Vista, San Diego.
Luis Alberto Urrea
A poem you might have missed
One of those home town elegies. Sometimes your home town gives you a serious case of the blues.
The Duck
Immense waves of flight
out from forests, out
from broken-mirror beaver
ponds of frozen mountains,
they fled from ice storms coming.
their shadows fell across the freeways
for days as I too migrated from frost
falling downslope and west,
looking to rest under a forgotten sun.
end of the continent--
it wasn't working. San Diego
after this bad spell I had, after
one too many ghosts in my bed, you know
how you wake up some mornings with the smell of the
invisible on your fingrs and the ruined broken plates
of your plans in slivers in the fireplace.
the first time I made these mistakes I was young
and poor: I was not young
anymore, but was still poor and making the same bad
moves.
had enough for gas--1,000 miles: got to the house
of an old lover who stripped me naked
and drew me a bath.
I hoped
to find a home in the city I died in
for my first quarter century.
the water did not wash away
my sins.
she said: get
out, so I went out to see if my old home town
had anything as interesting as an aspen, anything
as good as glacier water or
buffaloes churning in the purple shadows of far
Nebraska.
down
to Mission Bay,
put the club
on the wheel in case some vato was in the market
for a snow-beat jeep, and donned my
Colorado Department of Wildlife baseball cap.
old body made older by the fabulous
hunks of southern California flesh jogging around the bay.
just my rusted ankles and aching back and stupid, dark
ideas in a splitting head, sewage
afloat in the bay, the famous California
brown trout--idiots from El Cajon sped away
on ski-doo's yawping "YAHOO!"
my usual splendid pace.
feeling hideous.
you have to remind the body it exists.
it's not all bad dreams and drooping lusts.
I passed
old men staggering along
the bastards
until my rusted right ankle
threw red sparks into my bones and
caught fire in the kindling of my leg
and pulled me down on a rock
in the piss-yellow sand, feet in rotting seaweed
and heart in the guano.
the cool air felt wonderful.
a train rolling out of San Diego, going anywhere
I wanted to be
sounded its long cry and faded
north.
I walked to the water, put in my feet.
warm as a bath.
OK,
not bad,
I confessed.
fish fine as needles
tried to sew my toes
together.
near the effluent pipe
that carries tampons,
teardrops and coffee into the sea,
a duck.
just one.
a mallard male,
balding and ragged.
asleep.
I sat on my rock and said, "hey."
he jumped. looked at me. wack, he muttered softly,
talking to himself. wack,
wack. I said similar things
to myself when I
typed or did
the dishes. he turned his head and watched the water.
so did I.
"all right," I said.
he looked back at me, clacked
he beak four times,
settled, he fluffed
himself and tucked
his head under a wing and went back
to sleep.
a loud wind-surfer rattled by.
"what the hell!" I said. waaaack!
he cried. wack-wack-wack!
our heads swiveled in unison
when the absurd slapping of joggers' shoes
went past us.
we watched them recede: we lost interest in their errands
at precisely the same moment
and turned back
to our meditations.
the wind ruffled his feathers.
the wind lifted my hair.
me and the duck:
compadres.
suddenly,
I understood
the winos
of my youth,
the filthy old men
in the plaza downtown
when a fountain gurgled greenish water
and they still called the town "Dago"
and sailors rushed up Broadway
looking for tattoos
and hookers:
those old men shuffling
their vague plaza circles
reeking of piss
and port, no cents
to get on a bus
out of there: tossing
stale bread
to the birds
of the sidewalks.
holy vermin,
all of them:
dead.
those lonesome rummies
with their beautiful pigeons
sharing daylight
before winter got there.
old men
and
their pals.
I couldn't stay.
I didn't know
where I had to get, but
I had to go
and never
come back.
wack,
he said when I said, "so
long."
I had miles to flee
before it
snowed.
I left him
to rest
before he too
rose
to his own
imposssible
going.
Originally published in Flyway: A Journal of Writing and Environment from Iowa State University, 2008
Tags: poetrypoemSan Diego
July 25, 2011
Official book release for Queen of America!
enter a description of the event
July 23, 2011
Sketchbook Saturday
Continuing my weekly series of showing you some of my artwork. This one is called Cheetah, a pen-and-ink I did a few years ago. I like his face.
Tags: Sketchbook Saturday
July 22, 2011
Writers Live in a Tin House
We're back from our recent adventures in Oregon. Feeling lucky to have been part of the joyous Tin House writing conference, sponsored by the rocking mag of the same name. Cinderella and I stole some time to wander the Oregon coast, freeze on the haunting beaches and stare at the great coastal rocks standing sentinel in the waves. The flight home from was interminable, wracked by heat storms and late into the Chicago skies. I listened to the ipod all the way, too full of charged emotions to even read. You know how it is--as you live a miracle (Tin House) other elements of the "real world" (that world of illusions we accept as reality) sprinkles freeze-dried ferilizer all over you. It can make you crazy. But my musical shamans were tinkering with my brain all the way, urging me to get home and create. Good ol' Bunbury and Heroes del Silencio: "Yo no tengo la culpa de verte caer." It was hot and late when we landed, and we got a cab home, crawling into bed around 4:00 in the morning.
The thing about living in a Tin House is that it attracts lightning. Anyone hanging with that lot can attest to the fact that they get lit up with regularity. I hope to place a few more stories there soon.
I was pondering the hope and purity with which my students came toward writing and the writing life. Knowing what we know, the bad and the good, it is a delicate dance to nurture the souls of these good people. You are, after all, planting a garden. Yes, I'll carry the Tin House imagery a maudlin step further--the writing was the garden around the House. We had roses and cosmos, honeysuckle and strawberries and wonderful peppery nasturtiums all around. There are moles and cutworms and slugs that will come, no doubt. But for a moment, in that Oregon rain, it was all rich and redolent and full of possibility. Hope is the color of that harvest.
I'll tell you a small tale of the Life, that bizarre thing that happens when you leave your bedroom or your study or the confines of your notebook and step out there. The writing life, it seems to me, is divided into two halves: A) writing, B) career. The A part is holy. You might be hungry and sad and desperate, but you're free. Totally free. No one judges you, no one criticizes you, no one puts you in competition and then disparages your performance. Except perhaps you. The B part can also be holy--after all, look at how I get to travel, put my kids thorugh college, meet my heroes, and know all of you. I wouldn't know most of you except through the blessing of the career. It is my fervent hope that you who study with me for a time get to enjoy this experience. But it requires discipline. A different kind of discipline.
Once upon a time, I had a new book called Into the Beautiful North. It did all right, though some critics at first were baffled because it was not The Hummingbird's Daughter. But, hey--nothing is The Hummingbird's Daughter. Not even The Hummingbird's Daughter. (Part of your black belt in writing-fu is learning that the book mutates in the mind and the soul of its reader and becomes 130,000 different books as it spreads.) So it was time for Book Tur. I do well on Book Tour, being some kind of schmooze-generator and stand-up comic of the beat road. I dig it. Feel, as I have said before, like a blues band rolling from bowling alley to cafe all over the USA. I take Mrs. U--we think of it as The Amazing Race Urrea Edition. Also, along with Perpetual Book Tour, we like to think of the career (part B) as Perpetual Honeymoon. Hey--Marfa, Texas! Roswell, NM! Toad Suck, Arkansas!
We left the kids--now they are old enough to run the nhouse. And we headed off. Philadelphia! Awesome event at the library dntn. Got on the train for NYC the next morning--had a signing event at BEA and the next night a gig at the legendary KGB Bar. Cinderella's mother was super-excited about this book. Maybe because it was the first of mine she'd actually read, I don't know. But she was in Seattle doing all those things some folks would call cheating today--calling every bookstore and ordering a copy so they'd have at least one on their shelves. Sly, Grandma! Going to bookstores and finding my book on the shelf and turning it so it faced out and might catch the eye. (Little, Brown has always given me amazing Pink Floyd covers, so Grandma's instincts were right on.) She had been in dire health, very bad health, but on the phone she sounded 16 years old. It was our best conversation, ever. And after NYC, we just had to get through DC, Chitown and Portland to get to her in Seatttle. Less than a week.
BEA was a blast. KGB was also a blast--we had made some hand-fans with the logo of the fake restaurant from the book on them. A sneaky sumbitch rare book collector pilfered the entire package of them and scurried out the door before our boy Ken Wheaton could kick his ass. We used the day to hike across Manhattan to see Teresita's house on E 28th St. as research for Queen of America. As we lay in our fancy hotel bed, talking through our explosive weekend, the cell phone rang. It was Seattle. Grandma had died.
My publisher was heroic in arranging our emergency flight to Chi to collect our kids. We had to cancel DC and Printers Row. But here's where the discipline came in. My publisher offered to cancel the tour. No question. But they were counting on us. They had made incredible efforts to create this long, involved journey to launch this book. And it was Grandma's favorite. So we decided to tough it out. We flew from Chi to Portland, where I somehow faked my way through a reading at Powell's. Then we took our rental car and, kids asleep in the back, sped late into the night to Seattle. Had to cancel Elliott Bay due to the funeral, but did go and sign stock. After the funeral, we shipped the kids home and flew to San Diego. It was a terrible flight, delayed by storms. We were hours and hours late.
But I had agreed to do a fund-raiser for KPBS, the later host of the One Book One San Diego competition. But this was before such contests--they were trying to launch an international news desk featuring reportage from the Mexican border. Well! Who better than me to spearhead that! We did the event for about 350 paying fans at the lamented Bookworks in Del Mar. Raised several thousand dollars for the station. And then on and on and on.
That stuff you can't teach in a workshop. Every one of the grizzled, established authors at Tin House knows stories like this deep in their hearts. It's there when we sit together at lunch, or the degenerates in our dorm kitchen play poker all night. That part, that discipline, that slight bruising, that's the part that makes you a soldier. It will be present in the background hum of Bread Loaf too. Going in a little while. Yes, Vermont! Talk about gardens.
But the sacredness of the journey consists in this: no matter how hard it can be, no matter what they say about you, or your wicked inner critic says to yourself, the garden must remain inviolate. No matter what happens, you can go there at any time. Sometimes you can't even dig. All you can do is sit and look at the colors. I hope to help you keep that gate wide. Keep the threshold low. Make it rain.
Love ya. Now get outta here.
Tags: the writing life
July 11, 2011
Tin House Workshop Reading
Reading with Maggie Nelson and Steve Almond. Open to the public. For more information, http://www.tin house.com
Event Time: 8 p.m.
May 27, 2011
Tick Tock
I just returned from the BEA in NYC. (Book Expo America.) It was, as ever, a mad crush of a million book buyers, sellers, collectors, librarians, publishers, editors, publicists, costume-wearing characters, promoters, Twitterers, book-bloggers, reviewers, agents, freebie-hunters...oh, and writers. We were there, too. Lots and lots of writers. There was the occasional whiff of desperation, like a cheap cologne, in the air. You know: Amazon Publishing loomed in the corner like Darth Vader's Death Star! News of favorite bookstores dying seeped across the floor--our beloved Bookworks in Del Mar, for example. One dude told me my "legacy" publisher would be dead and gone in five years, and I'd better get to Kindling. Huh. Little, Brown? Gone? Ask Louisa May Alcott. They will prevail.
I was thrilled, and worn out, by the event. As usual. Big doses of coffee helped. I wa slucky enough to be around when L,B unleashed the ARCs (gorgeous) of QUEEN OF AMERICA. I stood with my editor, Geoff Shandler. He smiled and said, "Now you'll see what it's like to man a booth at BEA!" Well, it's interesting. Lots of people at first picked it up, looked at it, and dropped it. But then, suddenly, the lines formed and we burned through every single copy! Hundreds gone! I sweated through my jacket. Yes! My kind of work!
You can never tell if your book will do well or not. Many times, people asked me, "Does it stand alone, or do you have to read Hummingbird first?" So I can see that bit of info will be a big part of my task between now and December. Just to make sure people know it stands alone. HEY, PASS IT ON.
Happy to be home, and happy we went. Super excited that we discovered the best first book, ever: Eowyn Ivey's THE SNOW CHILD. Just wait. Seriously, just wait till you read this one. Neil Gaiman fans? You're going to be hooked. And she's the nicest person out there. Psst--don't tell Eowyn, but I'm grabbing an Alaska cruise so I can hang out some more!
OK. Watch this space. I'll let you know via FB and Twitter when this thang pops. Hope it knocks you out.
Love, L
April 17, 2011
How Bad Is It?
