Product Description

Born in Tijuana, the son of an Anglo woman and a Mexican father, Luis Urrea says, “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 the spiritual geography of what he calls “home.” These stories are puro Urrea: sad, funny, tragic, Mexican, Indian, gringo, passionate and fun.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #229090 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 148 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Urrea, best known for his hard-hitting nonfiction (Across the Wire; Nobody's Son), proves once again to be an eloquent and elegiac spokesman for the down-and-out and the disaffected in this collection of six stories whose settings range from Mexico to the Sioux nation in South Dakota. His protagonists are usually Hispanics and Native Americans whose struggles are documented most touchingly in one of the two longer stories, "A Day in the Life," which describes the plight of a poverty-stricken group of garbage pickers whose lives are torn apart by tragedy after they are forced to move from Mexico City to Tijuana. Urrea turns his attention to the brokenhearted in "Taped to the Sky," in which a man who takes to the road after his wife leaves him breaks down in the middle of Wyoming, where he learns the reason for his journey from the Native American man who helps him. He offers a different perspective on the Native American experience in "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which describes the sorrow of a man who marries a Sioux woman who succumbs to alcoholism, while "Father Returns From the Mountain" is a touching story of a man's attempt to come to terms with his father's death in an auto accident. Urrea is a poetic writer who draws strong characters and wears his literary compassion on his sleeve, and he uses all of his gifts to full advantage here. (Feb.)Forecast: This is a minor outing for Urrea, whose fiction has made less of a splash than his nonfiction. A breakout may be in store for him soon, though Little, Brown is publishing his next novel, which it secured as part of a two-book, six-figure deal.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
An award-winning poet, fiction writer and essayist, Urrea should be required reading for anyone living in the Southwest. -- San Diego Union Tribune, April 14, 2002

Richard Rodriguez says we are writing the stories of a mixed race, code-switching America. Urrea is writing these stories. -- Foreword Magazine, May 2002

Short, direct sentences and pitch-perfect dialogue build into original studies of passion, restlessness or mischief, one detail at a time. -- San Francisco Chronicle, April 14, 2002

From the Inside Flap
I always thought Luis Urrea was six skies rolled into one (I mean that in a good way), and this book proves that he speaks with a multitude of passionate, powerful and hilarious voices. This book is a beautiful kind of crazy. —Sherman Alexie

With this new collection of stories, Luis Urrea makes the short list of essential American writers. His glittering landscapes, which warp and ennoble the human spirit, bring to mind the work of Salman Rushdie. I found myself going back and rereading whole passages; Urrea’s got a way with words that raises the bar for the rest of us. What a marvel of a book! —Demetria Martínez, Mother Tongue

Urrea goes in for the big picture, and there seems to be no world he cannot capture. He writes with wit and ingenuity, and the stories possess a powerful sense of acceleration. With each story I was transported to an intense and fully imagined world. —Robert Boswell

Customer Reviews

Nice collection of stories
I've read other books of Urrea, both nonfiction, but his novels are always very entertaining so I did not hesitate to buy this book when I saw it. Most of Urrea's stories are spiritual and lead you into making out what the story means. One of his stories about the Tijuna dompes can be found in a previous work. Other then that the other stories were very well written and Urrea has learned to twist one's emotions while they are absorbed in his writing. I am a big fan of Urrea and would recommend to anybody to read this book and also his previous works.

Tender, Moving Stories Told From the Heart
If you believe Luis Urrea to be only a writer of nonfiction, you owe yourself a few nights with this book. A diverse collection of stories about real people, told with humor, feeling, and imagination, this book comes from the tender heart of a fine writer.

a fine craftsman
Three knockout pieces ("First Light," "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," & "A Day in the Life") here show Urrea at his best. He writes from a personal sense of mission, and his work reveals a worldview that is acutely aware of the shortcomings of the human race but ultimately optimistic. At his best he can't write a bad sentence; his images and the words he chooses have a visceral impact. Urrea is also the most successful Latino-gringo hybrid ("latingo"?) I know; no one I've read is close to him in his ability to depict both sides of how Mexicans and North Americans see each other (his description of how the workers living at the Tijuana garbage dump perceive the visiting American missionary women is priceless). Also worth reading are The Devil's Highway and The Hummingbird's Daughter.