The French-Cajun culture is similar to mine – they’re Catholic, they play accordions, and they eat hot chiles. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
Borders are liminal spaces. Anyone worthy of the title of ‘writer’ is a border writer. We all are border people. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
When ‘The Hummingbird’s Daughter’ came out, there was a certain backlash – ‘Well, this isn’t ‘The Devil’s Highway.” That’s just the way it goes. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
It’s almost easy for me to write about a magnificent tropical village with orchids and dragonflies. That’s intoxicating, but the United States is magical, too. We just forget this. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
I saw ‘The War Wagon’ with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, but it was dubbed into German. And it had Japanese subtitles and then this little strip with some Spanish words, and I’ve never forgotten that weird image. It was so magical and funky. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
The tone of ‘Into the Beautiful North’ is really the way I write. ‘Hummingbird’s Daughter’ was the anomaly. It was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
The situation was kind of complicated in that my mother didn’t speak Spanish. My father spoke English, you know, as best he could. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
Spanish was my first language. Honestly, I learned to first speak in Spanish, not English, because my poor mother had to go to San Diego every day to work and then come back. And she would come home when I was an infant long after I was asleep. Luis Alberto Urrea Read Quote
