Works by
Luis Alberto Urrea
(Writer)

Biography/Memoirs

• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999)

• Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (1998)
  Born to a Mexican father and an Anglo mother, Luis Urrea grew up in the middle of a clash of cultures and languages. In prose that seethes with energy and crackles with dark humor, he tells a story of what it means to belong to a nation that is sometimes painfully multicultural. Brutally honest and deeply moving, Nobody's Son is a testament to the borders that divide us all.

Fiction

• The Hummingbird's Daughter (2005)
  Epic mystical drama of a young woman's sudden sainthood in late 19th-century Mexico.

• In Search of Snow: A Novel (1994)
  Stunning first novel set in Arizona in the mid-1950s that is alive with the unique racial mix of the American Southwest.

Non-fiction

• The Devil's Highway: A True Story (2004) -- Finalist 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
  In May 2001, a group of 26 men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the Devil's Highway. These men-fathers and sons, brothers and strangers-entered a desert so harsh and desolate that even the Border Patrol is afraid to travel through it. Nights are frigid and days are so hot that dead bodies naturally mummify within minutes. Only 12 men came back out. Now Luis Urrea, who has won multiple awards for his writing about the border, tells the story of this modern, real-life adventure through a hellish no-man's-land where desperate dreams clash with the nearly invincible odds against survival. Spectacularly written, THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY is a fluorescent cross of Jon Krakauer, Charles Bowden, Juan Rulfo, and the Book of Revelation. It is as blazingly brilliant as the desert sun, with the bite of a chupacabra. It is the great leap forward for Luis Urrea.

• Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border (1993)
  A compelling and unprecedented look at life on the other side of the border.  Despite the numbers of people crossing over to the U.S., hundreds more remain behind in abject poverty.  Urrea worked closely with them and provides a compassionate and candid account of their lives.

Poetry

• Vatos (2000) by Luis Alberto Urrea with Jose Galvez, Photographer
  A unique collaboration of two acclaimed artists, Vatos is a tribute to Latino men who are too often forgotten, ignored and misrepresented by the larger culture-children playing in the streets, migrant workers toiling for a better life, homeboys in the barrio, young men with their girlfriends and their mothers, blue collar workers, activists on the streets, sons, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers. Vatos recognizes their joys, their sorrows, their tenderness and their strength. Through Galvez' photographs and Urrea's words, they will not be forgotten.
  
  The word "vato," by the way, is Mexican-American slang, a word that means "dude" or "guy," but here it carries more soul than either of these.

• Ghost Sickness: A Book of Poems (1997)

• The Fever of Being (1994)
  The Fever of Being is a series of poems, some written entirely or partly in Spanish, ranging in mood from comic to tragic and dealing with Urrea's life within the Hispanic-Anglo border culture.

Short Stories

• Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction (2002)
  Born in Tijuana, the son of an Anglo woman and a Mexican father, Urrea says that "Home isn't just a place, it is also a language." In these six stories-each wandering beneath different kinds of sky, from the thick Mazatlan starry night to the wide open spaces of the Sioux Nation in South Dakota-Urrea maps the spiritual geography of what he calls "home."

Other

• A World of Turtles: A Literary Celebration (1997), Gregory McNamee and Luis Alberto Urrea, eds.
  We have always loved turtles, and we have often suspected them of loving us. A World of Turtles, which gathers literary sightings of turtles over many times and many cultures, celebrates the long-standing place of these creatures in the human imagination.
  
  All through our history we have attributed greatly anthropomorphic values to turtles—as this anthology will confirm. Wise, droll, bright, wary, dependable, serious, and shrewd come to mind, but also, somehow, noble, steadfast, loving. Turtles are constant symbols of strength, patience, endurance, and long life. Yet, for us, from childhood through adulthood, they are perpetual sources of delight as well.
  
  With writings from Aesop to Melville, and folklore from the Abenaki to the Wagarra, A World of Turtles is an anthology of literary, folkloric, and scientific selections about turtles and tortoises, compiled from ancient, modern, and contemporary sources. It looks at these cherished creatures from every possible human perspective, revealing them (and us) in their many guises.

• Many Mountains Moving Vol. 2 No. 1: Burning Issues (1995), Luis Alberto Urrea, ed.