I often say poetry was my first love.
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.
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.
It's the most absurd story. I grew up in the dirt streets of Tijuana, dying of all kinds of diseases - tuberculosis, fevers, all that - and it somehow turned into this charmed life. I don't know exactly how.
Writing went from being a calling to being a job. Business ruined things. It became like making sausages in a sausage factory.
The French-Cajun culture is similar to mine - they're Catholic, they play accordions, and they eat hot chiles.
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.
I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery.
Books are like chocolate. Can't eat just one.
I love books with titles like, 'How Do You Spank a Porcupine?,' 'Arnie, the Darling Starling,' or 'The Bat in My Pocket.'
With a name like Luis Alberto Urrea, it's political no matter what I do.
People think of me as a political writer, but I don't think of myself that way.
In the end, I'm really interested in people and what we do with our short time here on earth. I'm interested in the human soul.
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.
I don't like to see people get kicked around. You have to stand up for them.
'The Hummingbird's Daughter' took 20 years to write.
I saw 'The War Wagon' with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, but it was dubbed into German. And it had Japanese subtitles and then this little strip with some Spanish words, and I've never forgotten that weird image. It was so magical and funky.
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.
I've been treated beautifully wherever I've gone, and I really think we all want to love each other.
The tone of 'Into the Beautiful North' is really the way I write. 'Hummingbird's Daughter' was the anomaly. It was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.
