Praised by many as a significant “voice of the border,” writer Luis Alberto Urrea has explained the reason for his persistent focus on life at the edge: “The border runs down the middle of me,” he says. “I have a barbed-wire fence neatly bisecting my heart.” He was born in Tijuana in 1955 and raised in San Diego, torn between the conflicting cultures of his father’s Mexico and his mother’s United States. Urrea earned writing degrees from the University of California at San Diego (BA, 1977) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (MA, 1994), and for a decade pursued a dual career as a relief worker and investigative journalist in the slums surrounding Tijuana. He wrote four books exposing the horrors of extreme poverty that he encountered, all of them acclaimed for their combination of stark realism and lyrical voice: Across the Wire (1993); By the Lake of Sleeping Children (1996); Nobody’s Son (1998), winner of the American Book Award; and The Devil’s Highway (2004), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. A popular fiction writer as well, Urrea has published multiple collections of short stories and poems and many novels, including the Pulitzer-nominated The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005) and, most recently, Queen of America (2011). Currently a professor at the University of Illinois‒Chicago, he has taught expository and creative writing at several universities and contributes a monthly column to Orion magazine.
In this 2012 audio essay for Orion, Urrea examines the ways reading altered his perceptions of the downtrodden neighborhood of his youth. His focus is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain’s idyllic 1876 novel about a mischievous boy growing up along the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Petersburg, Missouri. Becky Thatcher, whom Urrea mentions toward the end of the piece, is Tom Sawyer’s friend and longtime crush.
Download the transcript.
Listen to “Life on the Mississippi,” and respond to the following questions.
Are the docks, the boats, and the river Urrea portrays real or imaginary? Why do you suppose the writer dwells on them as he does?
What would you say is Urrea’s PURPOSE in this piece? How would you express his unstated THESIS?
What ASSUMPTIONS does the author make about his listeners’ knowledge of literature? Does one need to be familiar with the works of Mark Twain or Rudyard Kipling to understand Urrea’s meaning?
OTHER METHODS What implied COMPARISON does Urrea make with the depiction of an ant battle near the end of his essay? What GENERALIZATION does he support with this ANALOGY?
Have you ever had the experience of feeling caught between two worlds, whether because of imagination or culture or because of some other sense of disconnection — struggling with neighbors, being new in town, feeling friendless, or returning home after being away? Describe the experience in an essay to be read aloud, using plenty of details to help your listeners understand your feelings.
CONNECTIONS Compare Urrea’s audio essay to Annie Dillard’s “The Chase” (Chap. 4). Dillard and Urrea both write about adventures in their childhoods, although their circumstances growing up were quite different. What is the purpose of each essay? What do Urrea and Dillard want us to understand about them and their lives? How does each want us to respond?