Distinguished speaker

I heard Luis Urrea speak last night. He's the author of The Devil's Highway, which tells the grim story of 14 "walkers" who died in the Arizona desert attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico. The book is about more than that, though; it's about people--on both sides of the border, on both sides of the law--who are working at cross purposes, sometimes even within themselves. A fair-skinned, fair-haired guy, he was born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an American mother, and he spent the first half of his talk describing his family background and their quirky ancestral mix (his paternal grandmother's surname, for instance, was Murray, "pronounced," Urrea said, "Muurrrray.")

I've heard a lot of people lecture at UC Davis, but I have never heard anyone better than Luis Urrea (he joins Bill Clinton and Mario Cuomo in that category). Smart, engaging, moving, a riveting storyteller with a self-deprecating sense of humor who talked for a solid hour with nary a notecard to guide him; he made me laugh . . . and brought me to tears. He opened with a prayer to the four directions, which he spoke first in (I think) Nahuatl (I'm not sure I'm remembering the name correctly), then Mexican Spanish, then English: "I am West, I am . . . ; I am South, I am . . . ; I am East, I am . . . ; I am North, I am . . . ." Beautiful, moving, wonderful to hear how the words sounded in each version (and reminding me how words are only symbols of the things, themselves).

Urrea's Web site, La Vista, is worth a visit. And do I ever wish I could have dinner with him.