Luis Alberto Urrea's Blog, page 29

Last chance to vote!

This is Cindy, hijacking Luis's blog before we head out for Squaw Valley in the morning.

Into the Beautiful North is one of three finalists for San Diego's One Book program. Right now, Luis is trailing in the voting, which seems unbelievable for a local boy who's written a book all about San Diego and Tijuana and the people who have most inspired his work. So I'm thinking maybe not everybody knows to vote!

Anybody can vote in this poll, you don't have to live in San Diego. Click here or go to w...

The Road Goes on Forever

"I've been gone away so long..." Chris Whitley

Three weeks of non-stop book tour, 48 hours to do laundry and pack, three weeks in England with a side trip to Paris. Home for ten days to try to work before going to Squaw Valley to turn my profoundly burned brain toward workshops...before my birthday...and school starting...and the Fall touring season kicks in. I've tried to keep some record of the journeys on Facebook and Twitter. Busy, busy, busy.

I hope to post some tour goodies here. Som...

Post Cards

To everyone complaining about not getting the post-cards they wrote for: get in line, ya mugs! The cards went to fans at the events first, of course. We blew through about 500 of them. Now we're home for about one day. In fact, as I write, I'm home for two hours. Then we go to England for three weeks.

I applaud your patience...because that's ALL I CAN DO. Even if we tried to have your cards printed and delivered and mailed to you, I couldn't do it in two hours. Or two days.

But I have al...

The Road Goes on Forever

Hello, Friends. Back again. Got home yesterday afternoon after three weeks of travel. According to mapquest, the book tour took Cinderella and me on an 8,000 mile loop. Almost 3,000 miles by car. How about that. I kept journals the whole way, but I'll have to show you some of those later because tomorrow afternoon, we leave for London. I'll do a book reception and a reading over there in the UK. Is that the same trip, then? Or a new trip? Eh? Do I start a new series of notebooks, or...

The One That Starts It All

And today: Nayeli's Cherished Postcard!
If you've read Into the Beautiful North, you recognize this postcard as Nayeli's cherished talisman from her father. Kankakee? A turkey? Not hard to understand why this would seem incredibly exotic to a young girl in tropical Mexico!
If you come to one of my readings on this tour, I will give you one of these postcards (or one of the Tres Camarones cards) already stamped and waiting for you to address to someone you love. Can you send them on a life ques...

Nobody says Hola!

In the lovely town of Tres Camarones, the townspeople have a quaint tradition of saying "hello" by saying "goodbye!" In Tres Camarones, you don't say Hola, instead the townspeople greet each other with cries of "Adios!" This is a true tradition in my father's hometown of Rosario, Sinaloa that I've always loved. So I knew I had to use it in my novel, Into the Beautiful North. And as part of The Postcard Ministry, we decided to showcase this little oddity. This is the second postcard in the se...

We're out in Massachusetts, Day Three of Book Tour 2010 a...

We're out in Massachusetts, Day Three of Book Tour 2010 and I wanted to talk about The Postcard Ministry.Those of you who've read Into the Beautiful North know about the tiny town of Tres Camarones (Three Shrimp) in Sinaloa. What you might not know is I based it on my dad's hometown of Rosario, Sinaloa. And I've got pictures!Much of the motivation for Nayeli to take her epic journey is because of her sacred object: a postcard from her father. Thinking about that postcard, I realized that we d...

Time for a road trip; bring your iphone!

I think I forgot to tell you this: Into the Beautiful North is now an iphone app!



It's summertime and doesn't a road trip sound like the perfect plan? Into The Beautiful North releases in paperback next week. But you can ride along with Nayeli and Tacho now on your iphone.Even better, you can practice your Spanish by trying Rumbo al Hermosa Norte, the Spanish version in an iphone app.

And for those of you who'd like to understand more about immigration and crossing the border, The Devil's...

My high school graduation

As long as we're in the midst of graduation season, I thought you'd enjoy pictures of my high school graduation, recently unearthed in a desk purge. This is me with Prudence, graduating from Clairemont High School, Class of '73. Have no idea who the woman is in the background. She's my favorite part of this picture!

Bless Me, Albuquerque II: Rudy Rules

I first became aware of Rudolofo Anaya in 1978. I was working with the "relief crew" (Across the Wire, etc.) in Tijuana. To make some money--something I never had--I went to work for Cesar Gonzalez at San Diego Mesa College. I was his bilingual tutor and TA in Chicano Studies. This is when I heard of the legenday Bless Me, Ultima. But I was deeply into the world of Baptist missions folks, and didn't know if I could handle anything like curanderas. I had been raised among curanderas, min...