Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life

Urrea's elegant, painful memoir completes the poet/novelist's Border Trilogy, following Across the Wire and By the Lake of Sleeping Children. The son of an Anglo-American mother and a Mexican father, Urrea muses on the frustrations and logical fallacies of anti-Mexican racism as he traces the often-forgotten multicultural origins of Anglo-American culture and language. Particularly moving is his account of his mother's horrifying experiences in the Red Cross during WWII. After being seriously wounded and witnessing the horrors of Buchenwald, she took refuge in San Francisco, where she met Urrea's father, the then blonde-haired, blue-eyed top security man to the Mexican president. By the time Urrea was born in 1955, though, the family was barely making ends meet in Tijuana, where they stayed until Urrea was three. In meandering, discursive portraits, Urrea chronicles his growth, from childhood in San Diego to a cross-country trip in writer Edward Abbey's car, during which he reminisces about the betrayal he felt discovering the anti-Mexican-immigrant sentiments of his favorite writer. Over time, Urrea's mother rejects her son's Mexican origins, even after he begins teaching at Harvard, declaring, "You are not a Mexican! Why can't you be called Louis instead of Luis?" Urrea's interests are not only in the personal but include, for example, the etymology of racist slang: Mexicans came to be called "greasers" because they had been the only people with the skills to grease the wheel axles of covered wagons traveling west; "gringos" because of "Green Grow the Lilacs," a favorite of American soldiers during the Mexican-American War. This is not, however, just a book about race. In fact, it's just as much about writing, and at its best Urrea's staccato phrases build up to a vivid, often brutal image.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This memoir completes Urrea's Border Trilogy; the other books in the work are Across the Wire (1993) and By the Lake of Sleeping Children (1996). Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico, of an Anglo mother and Mexican father, but moved with them to San Diego at the age of three. There his identity was challenged regularly, both in the barrio where he lived and in his own home, where he was caught in the ongoing cultural battle between his parents. Uncomplicated intelligence, compassion, and humor permeate the seven distinct chapters of this book, whether Urrea is relating the macho escapades of the young males of his extended family, expounding on his tutelage by the good sisters at St. Jude's Catholic grade school, or describing the loving, earthy couple who helped raise him. Urrea is not simply a great writer and a wonderful storyteller; he is completely enamored with words and language--not so much as tools of the trade but as life's sustenance, "the only bread we can share." Grace Fill

"Words are the only bread we can really share," is the peaceful conclusion reached by the author of these energetic and darkly humorous memoirs about a childhood divided between Mexico and the United States. The third part of the trilogy begun with Across the Wire (LJ 1/93), this book establishes Urrea's prominence among Chicano writers. Whether he is describing the politics of his bicultural family or the polarities of a place like Tijuana, he deftly dissects the bilingual jokes and clich?s of Chicano culture. The pace of the storiesAoften based on dialog and vivid anecdoteAis brisk. The content can be tender (e.g., when dealing with older female faith healers) or brutal (when describing the realities of borderland machismo). The essential tone, however, is of self-deprecating humor about the challenge of explaining a dual identity, a task he accomplishes with passion and understanding. Recommended for Latino literature collections.ARebecca Martin, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.