Background
Luis Alberto was born on August 20, 1955 in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. He is the son of Alberto and Phyllis de Urrea. He was raised from the age of three in San Diego.
Luis Alberto Urrea
University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United States
Luís Alberto Urrea finished the University of Colorado at Boulder with a Master of Arts in 1994.
University California, San Diego, California, United States
Luis Alberto studied at University California, San Diego and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1977.
Luis Alberto Urrea
Luis Alberto Urrea
Luis Alberto Urrea
Luis Alberto Urrea
Luis Alberto Urrea
Luis Alberto Urrea
Luis Alberto Urrea
(Across the Wire is a tribute to the tenacity of a people ...)
Across the Wire is a tribute to the tenacity of a people who have learned to survive against the most impossible odds, and returns to these forgotten people their pride and their identity.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385425309/?tag=2022091-20
1993
(More than just an expose, Across the Wire is a tribute to...)
More than just an expose, Across the Wire is a tribute to the tenacity of a people who have learned to survive against the most impossible odds, and returns to these forgotten people their pride and their identity.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004C43FFM/?tag=2022091-20
1993
(In the hot Arizona desert of the late 1950s, Mike McGurk ...)
In the hot Arizona desert of the late 1950s, Mike McGurk comes of age in one big, riotous gush. Trapped pumping gas at a desolate roadstop, he yearns for things he has never known: love, hope, and the soft, white calmness of snow. Mike's world is filled with a menagerie of quirky characters, who cope with the weight of their unfulfilled dreams with bravado, humor, and violence. Mike trades snappy insults with his macho father, Texaco Turk McGurk, a moustachioed amateur boxer and self-proclaimed war hero who is unable to talk about love. Mike lusts after Lily, his seductive, poem-writing cousin. He cowers before and then confronts the vicious Ramses, grandson of Mr. Sneezy, the wisecracking Apache. And he is rescued by his best friend, Bobo, who delivers him into the care of the loving and generous Mama and Papa Garcia.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816520151/?tag=2022091-20
1994
(The Fever of Being is a series of poems, some written ent...)
The Fever of Being is a series of poems, some written entirely or partly in Spanish, ranging in mood from comic to tragic and dealing with Urrea's life within the Hispanic-Anglo border culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0931122783/?tag=2022091-20
1994
(In sixteen indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the hor...)
In sixteen indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the horrors and the simple joys of people trapped between the two worlds of Mexico and the United States - and ignored by both. The result is a startling and memorable work of first-person reportage.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385484194/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(Vatos is a tribute to Latino men who are too often forgot...)
Vatos is a tribute to Latino men who are too often forgotten, ignored and misrepresented by the larger culture-children playing in the streets, migrant workers toiling for a better life, homeboys in the barrio, young men with their girlfriends and their mothers, blue collar workers, activists on the streets, sons, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers. Vatos recognizes their joys, their sorrows, their tenderness and their strength. Through Galvez' photographs and Urrea's words, they will not be forgotten.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0938317520/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(In these six stories - each wandering beneath different k...)
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."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0938317636/?tag=2022091-20
2002
(In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexica...)
In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SETE5K/?tag=2022091-20
2004
(The prizewinning writer Luis Alberto Urrea's long-awaited...)
The prizewinning writer Luis Alberto Urrea's long-awaited novel is an epic mystical drama of a young woman's sudden sainthood in late 19th-century Mexico. It is 1889, and civil war is brewing in Mexico. A 16-year-old girl, Teresita, the illegitimate but beloved daughter of the wealthy and powerful rancher Don Tomas Urrea, wakes from the strangest dream-a dream that she has died. Only it was not a dream. This passionate and rebellious young woman has arisen from death with a power to heal-but it will take all her faith to endure the trials that await her and her family now that she has become the Saint of Cabora. The Hummingbird's Daughter is a vast, hugely satisfying novel of love and loss, joy and pain.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JMKSAQ/?tag=2022091-20
2005
(Besieged by pilgrims in desperate need of her healing pow...)
Besieged by pilgrims in desperate need of her healing powers, and pursued by assassins, Teresita Urrea has no choice but to flee the borderlands and embark on an extraordinary journey into the heart of turn-of-the-century America. Teresita's passage will take her to New York, San Francisco, and St. Louis, where she will encounter European royalty, Cuban poets, beauty queens, anxious immigrants and grand tycoons-and, among them, a man who will force Teresita to finally ask herself the ultimate question: is a saint allowed to fall in love?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QZ9QLY/?tag=2022091-20
2011
Luis Alberto was born on August 20, 1955 in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. He is the son of Alberto and Phyllis de Urrea. He was raised from the age of three in San Diego.
Luis Alberto studied at University California, San Diego and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1977. He also finished the University of Colorado at Boulder with a Master of Arts in 1994.
Luis Alberto started to work as the teacher of expository writing at Harvard University during 1982-1987. He was an associate professor, assistant to president for special projects at Massachusetts Bay Community College during 1987-1990.
In 1994 he wrote his first novel In Search of Snow. It followed the series of books - Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border, By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border, and Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life. From 1990 till 1996 he was a freelance writer, editor, workshop leader. Urrea, a Mexican-border relief worker for nearly ten years, “wrote these fragmentary, evocative tales of heartbreak and hope for the San Diego Reader after he returned to the region in 1990,” noted Publishers Weekly’s Peggy Kaganoff.
Later, he was an associate professor at University Southwest Louisiana, Lafayette during 1996-1999. Luis Alberto also held a position of an associate professor of creative writing at University Illinois, Chicago, since 1999.
His mother died in 1990, bringing Urrea back to California to settle her affairs, and parts of Across the Wire were published in the San Diego Reader. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
(Vatos is a tribute to Latino men who are too often forgot...)
2000(Besieged by pilgrims in desperate need of her healing pow...)
2011(In these six stories - each wandering beneath different k...)
2002(More than just an expose, Across the Wire is a tribute to...)
1993(The Fever of Being is a series of poems, some written ent...)
1994(Across the Wire is a tribute to the tenacity of a people ...)
1993(In sixteen indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the hor...)
1996(In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexica...)
2004(The prizewinning writer Luis Alberto Urrea's long-awaited...)
2005(In the hot Arizona desert of the late 1950s, Mike McGurk ...)
1994Quotes from others about the person
Grace Fill lauded in Booklist: “Urrea is not simply a great writer and a wonderful storyteller; he is completely enamored with words and language.”
Urrea married Cinderella Urrea in 1987, they divorced in 1993. He has 3 children.