Luis Alberto Urrea
Auteur de The Hummingbird's Daughter
A propos de l'auteur
Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of many books of nonfiction and poetry. He has won the Christopher Award, the Western States Book Award, and most recently, the American Book Award.
Crédit image: luisurrea.com
Séries
Œuvres de Luis Alberto Urrea
Hummingbirds Daughter" 1 exemplaire
True Story 1 exemplaire
Sinekkuşu'nun Kızı 1 exemplaire
Amapola 1 exemplaire
Father Returns from the Mountain 1 exemplaire
Oeuvres associées
My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop (2012) — Contributeur — 569 exemplaires, 15 critiques
Not So Funny When It Happened: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure (2000) — Contributeur — 236 exemplaires, 6 critiques
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection (2003) — Contributeur — 233 exemplaires, 2 critiques
Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives (Voice of Witness) (2008) — Avant-propos — 127 exemplaires, 3 critiques
By Hook or By Crook and 30 More of the Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year (2010) — Contributeur — 85 exemplaires
Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America (2010) — Contributeur — 69 exemplaires, 15 critiques
Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (2020) — Contributeur — 61 exemplaires, 7 critiques
The Highway Kind: Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drivers, and Dark Roads (2016) — Contributeur — 53 exemplaires, 3 critiques
Currents from the Dancing River: Contemporary Latino Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry (1994) — Contributeur — 50 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- 1955-08-20
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- USA
- Lieu de naissance
- Tijuana, Mexico
- Lieux de résidence
- Tijuana, Mexico
San Diego, California, USA
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Boulder, Colorado, USA
Tucson, Arizona, USA
Lafayette, Louisiana, USA (tout afficher 7)
Naperville, Illinois, USA - Études
- University of California, San Diego
University of Colorado - Professions
- author
professor - Prix et distinctions
- Western States Book Award (Poetry ∙ 1996)
Latino Literature Hall of Fame (2000)
Lannan Literary Award (Nonfiction ∙ 2004)
Pulitzer Prize Finalist (2005)
Kiriyama Prize (2006)
American Book Award (1999) - Agent
- Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency
Michael Cendejas (Lynn Pleshette Agency ∙ Lynn Pleshette Agency)
Trinity Ray (American Program Bureau ∙ American Program Bureau)
Julie Barer (Barer Literary ∙ LLC) - Courte biographie
- Luis Alberto Urrea (born August 20, 1955 in Tijuana, Mexico) is a Mexican American poet, novelist, and essayist.
Luis Urrea is the son of Alberto Urrea Murray, of Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico and Phyllis Dashiell, born in Staten Island, New York. He was born on August 20, 1955 in Tijuana, Mexico, and listed as an American born abroad. Both his parents worked in San Diego. In 1958 the family moved to Logan Heights in South San Diego, because he had tuberculosis and they felt he would recover in the US. The family moved again in 1965 to Clairemont, a newer subdivision in the city of San Diego. His mother encouraged him to write and encouraged him to attend college and to apply for grants that would help pay for his college education. He attended the University of California, San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing in 1977. Urrea completed his graduate studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His father died by murder on a trip to his home village in 1977, seeking money there to spend on his son's college education. This motivated Urrea to write an essay that was published in 1980, as way of processing his grief.
After serving as a relief worker in Tijuana, he worked as a teachers aid in the Chicano Studies department in San Diego's Mesa College in 1978. He also worked as a film extra and columnist-editor-cartoonist for several publications. In June 1982 Urrea moved to Boston where he taught expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard University. He has also taught at Massachusetts Bay Community College, and the University of Colorado, and he was the writer in residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Urrea married in 1987, and later divorced in 1993. In 1994, Urrea's first novel, In Search of Snow, was published. 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.
Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, Illinois, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In two heavily researched historical novels, The Hummingbird's Daughter and Queen of America, Urrea tells the story of his father's aunt, Teresita Urrea, who was known as "The Saint of Cabora" and "The Mexican Joan of Arc."
Membres
Discussions
November 2022: Luis Alberto Urrea à Monthly Author Reads (Novembre 2022)
Critiques
Good Night, Irene-Luis Alberto Urrea, author; Barrie Krenik, Luis Alberto Urrea, narrators
With this novel, the author has tried to give the world the historic picture of his mother’s service to the country during World War II. Apparently, the women who worked for the Red Cross, still remain largely unsung. They served a purpose that some might mock, but those soldiers who were the recipients of their kindness felt decidedly different. The author’s mother was part of a program using clubmobiles, a truck engineered to produce donuts and coffee for the soldiers. They drove where they were told, often to the front and were exposed to and in great danger. They were brave and fearless, for the most part, just interested in cheering up and inspiring the soldiers to continue their fight. They were well-trained, they had to be, because the field of war was not something to laugh about, and this brief respite was a welcome relief for the soldiers. They flirted and/or protected these women who were so motivated to help them. It was a different time however, and the reader might find some of the narrative unrealistic in today’s modern world, and in other ways, almost unrealistic for that time period. Women were subservient, women were only employed in certain positions, women “knew their place”. Because they were not officially soldiers, and because they were unarmed and not in the infantry, their contribution was largely ignored or mocked for all these years.
To tell the story of his mother’s sacrifice and struggles, when she returned, the author made up some of the characters and fashioned others with whatever information he was able to learn about them. His mother was one of the “donut dollies”, though they refused to be known as that, and she was so much more, he discovered, after reading her notes and diaries of those years. He discovered what motivated his mother, what memories she hid and what memories haunted her. In his presentation, some of the narrative seemed a bit trivial, like when someone says, ”pretty soon we will be flying around in spaceships”, and also it seemed too melodramatic and grotesque at times, and I wondered just how true it was. Could anyone have survived the collapse of the building as Dot and Irene supposedly did? Did the Nazis really remove the man’s eye with a spoon? The image was so gruesome and the man was described as so badly injured that it was hard to believe he was capable of speech, let alone walking around.
In addition to being about unsung female heroines, it is also a love story, a love story not only between men and women, but between friends, and it is well worth the read. The holes that may be discovered in the story are there by necessity, since little information about these women has survived, but the women Urrea writes about were indeed Red Cross soldiers, there is no doubt about that, and they deserve recognition, praise and a place in history. However, my view of the Red Cross, in light of how they have treated Israel over the years and currently, now, with the way they have ignored the hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas, leaves a lot to be desired for me, and my respect for that organization has largely diminished, if not disappeared entirely. They have identified more fully with the Middle Eastern Terrorists than with the only Democratic country in the Middle East that was attacked with devastating horror and force while there was an existing ceasefire that the terrorists broke, not Israel.… (plus d'informations)
With this novel, the author has tried to give the world the historic picture of his mother’s service to the country during World War II. Apparently, the women who worked for the Red Cross, still remain largely unsung. They served a purpose that some might mock, but those soldiers who were the recipients of their kindness felt decidedly different. The author’s mother was part of a program using clubmobiles, a truck engineered to produce donuts and coffee for the soldiers. They drove where they were told, often to the front and were exposed to and in great danger. They were brave and fearless, for the most part, just interested in cheering up and inspiring the soldiers to continue their fight. They were well-trained, they had to be, because the field of war was not something to laugh about, and this brief respite was a welcome relief for the soldiers. They flirted and/or protected these women who were so motivated to help them. It was a different time however, and the reader might find some of the narrative unrealistic in today’s modern world, and in other ways, almost unrealistic for that time period. Women were subservient, women were only employed in certain positions, women “knew their place”. Because they were not officially soldiers, and because they were unarmed and not in the infantry, their contribution was largely ignored or mocked for all these years.
To tell the story of his mother’s sacrifice and struggles, when she returned, the author made up some of the characters and fashioned others with whatever information he was able to learn about them. His mother was one of the “donut dollies”, though they refused to be known as that, and she was so much more, he discovered, after reading her notes and diaries of those years. He discovered what motivated his mother, what memories she hid and what memories haunted her. In his presentation, some of the narrative seemed a bit trivial, like when someone says, ”pretty soon we will be flying around in spaceships”, and also it seemed too melodramatic and grotesque at times, and I wondered just how true it was. Could anyone have survived the collapse of the building as Dot and Irene supposedly did? Did the Nazis really remove the man’s eye with a spoon? The image was so gruesome and the man was described as so badly injured that it was hard to believe he was capable of speech, let alone walking around.
In addition to being about unsung female heroines, it is also a love story, a love story not only between men and women, but between friends, and it is well worth the read. The holes that may be discovered in the story are there by necessity, since little information about these women has survived, but the women Urrea writes about were indeed Red Cross soldiers, there is no doubt about that, and they deserve recognition, praise and a place in history. However, my view of the Red Cross, in light of how they have treated Israel over the years and currently, now, with the way they have ignored the hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas, leaves a lot to be desired for me, and my respect for that organization has largely diminished, if not disappeared entirely. They have identified more fully with the Middle Eastern Terrorists than with the only Democratic country in the Middle East that was attacked with devastating horror and force while there was an existing ceasefire that the terrorists broke, not Israel.… (plus d'informations)
The women who served their country by keeping up troop morale during WWII are the center of this novel. Often referred to as Donut Dollies, the main characters in this book are doing their duty in this way, for different reasons. There are descriptions of battles and military life on the ground that ring very true, and I gained a greater appreciation for these women whom I just learned about in a different novel, where they were only mentioned. I am touched that the author used his mother's experiences as the beginning of his book. What I did find difficult was the writing style. I was over halfway through the book and still did not have a good picture of the two main characters, Irene and Dorothy. I felt almost like I never got to know them. The ending had me confused for a bit too and had me flipping back pages for clarification. Even doing that, I still have some lingering questions about the ending.… (plus d'informations)
Great rolicking likeable tale of a family, a dying patriarch and his siblings, his children, his wife which I enjoyed even more after hearing the author talk about writing it.
Listes
Prix et récompenses
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Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 26
- Aussi par
- 21
- Membres
- 5,946
- Popularité
- #4,154
- Évaluation
- 4.0
- Critiques
- 285
- ISBN
- 104
- Langues
- 4
- Favoris
- 15
Urrea's characters, Dorothy and Irene, begin working together on a truck in 1943 and continue together until the end of the war. At first intending to write a non-fiction account of the Dollies, he learned the records for the Clubmobile Corp were destroyed in the 1970s in a warehouse fire so he turned to fiction to tell his mother's story. His research included making friends with Jill Knappenberger, who worked alongside his mother who died in 1990.… (plus d'informations)