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" I was deeply infected with storytelling from the get go, and I truly love it. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Get
Love
Storytelling
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" I had not seen lawns till fifth grade - big green lawns. "
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Till
Seen
Big
" I've been treated beautifully wherever I've gone, and I really think we all want to love each other. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Gone
Think
Want
" Writing went from being a calling to being a job. Business ruined things. It became like making sausages in a sausage factory. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Things
Job
Writing
" I used to work with a relief group that took care of the people in the dump. We took them food and water and medicine and built homes and took them to church services, whatever was needed. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Water
Food
Church
" It's not like Mexicans have an illegal immigration organ in their body and at 14 kicks off a hormone and shows them how to come to the United States illegally. It's a question of desperation for a vast majority of them. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Question
Immigration
Body
" 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
Well
Out
Daughter
" Way back when I was working at the dump, I saw that, even when living among the trash, that some people would decide to choose joy in their lives. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Back
Way
People
" When I was a little boy in Tijuana, it was wonderland. We left when I was probably four - I was dying of tuberculosis. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Left
Little
Four
" I love books with titles like, 'How Do You Spank a Porcupine?,' 'Arnie, the Darling Starling,' or 'The Bat in My Pocket.' "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Titles
Like
Books
" I missed the Wilco phenom while busy obsessing over rock en Espanol. So imagine my surprise when I found myself at O'Hare getting on a plane with my Chi-town homeboy, Jeff Tweedy. I loved the guy right away and loved his family. How odd to know somebody before you listen to them. I don't know if that's bad or good. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Busy
Surprise
Myself
" I have often said I come from a family of unreliable narrators. I tend to believe their struggles with racism, identity, nationality do dovetail with my motivation to write. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Motivation
Identity
Family
" I don't like to see people get kicked around. You have to stand up for them. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
See
People
Like
" The French-Cajun culture is similar to mine - they're Catholic, they play accordions, and they eat hot chiles. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Hot
Play
Mine
" I read most often in bed as part of my attempted sleep ritual. But I spend a lot of time reading on planes and in hotels, too. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Hotels
Bed
Most
" Many of us writers tour like a literary Bachman Turner Overdrive. We ain't pretty, but we're on the road. Many of us wish we were rock stars anyway. For my part, I live in my iPod. The musicians there are my constant companions on the road. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Stars
Rock
Live
" I believe God is a poet; every religion in our history was made of poems and songs, and not a few of them had books attached. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
History
Believe
Books
" I'm interested in the eternal soul. That's what I write about. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Soul
Interested
About
" I don't like being angry all the time; it's not good for me. I have to have serenity or else go to war. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Good
Angry
War
" When I was doing missionary work when I was younger, which started this obsession of mine with the literature of witness, I was a translator for a missionary group, and I spent years in a Tijuana dump. People were really thrown by the fact that the Mexican poor, many of them pureblood indigenous people, seemed happy. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Happy
Indigenous People
Work
" I'm always trying to, using literature, subvert people's responses. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Trying
People
Always
" A great Chicano forebear of mine in writing is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. He was writing good border mysteries for Chicano readers back in the '80s and '90s. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Back
Mine
Great
" 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
Speak
Day
Home
" Borders are liminal spaces. Anyone worthy of the title of 'writer' is a border writer. We all are border people. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Worthy
Borders
People
" Writers write without support. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Writers
Support
Without
" My dad looked like Errol Flynn, and I think my mom thought she was moving into a hacienda, but they lived on a dirt street in Tijuana, a house jammed with relatives, nobody speaking English. She didn't know a word of Spanish. She grew up well and was appalled and humiliated, terrified of anyone ethnic. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Know
Think
She
" I've been told not to tour down in Mexico. I am too well-known now. The kidnappers may think that my publisher will pay a ransom. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Now
Think
Will
" I was torn between the Americanness my mom wanted for me and the Mexicanness my father wanted - they were wrestling for cultural influence over me. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Me
Wrestling
Father
" During grade school, we moved to a white, working-class suburb in San Diego, and there were no Mexicans. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Working-Class
White
School
" I'm a theological writer mistaken for a political writer. My theme is grace versus karma. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Theme
Writer
Grace
" 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
Father
Best
Know