The Tijuana Book of the Dead

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Overview

From the author of Pulitzer-nominated The Devil’s Highway and national bestseller The Hummingbird’s Daughter comes an exquisitely composed collection of poetry on life at the border. Weaving English and Spanish languages as fluidly as he blends cultures of the southwest, Luis Urrea offers a tour of Tijuana, spanning from Skid Row, to the suburbs of East Los Angeles, to the stunning yet deadly Mojave Desert, to Mexico and the border fence itself. Mixing lyricism and colloquial voices, mysticism and the daily grind, Urrea explores duality and the concept of blurring borders in a melting pot society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619024823
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	03/17/2015
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	439,331
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Luis Alberto Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss, and triumph. Born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea has published extensively in all the major genres. The critically acclaimed and best-selling author of 13 books, he has won numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays, and his work has been featured in The Best American Poetry series. Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Read an Excerpt

"Siege Communiqué"

In Tijuana they said Juárez
was the pueblo where old
whores went to die, where
25 cents bought flesh

by the river, no
body loved you, Sister—
so close to Texas
so far from
Revolución.

Today, they say
you are the cementerio
of hope: the only crop
in your garden of Río
Grande mud is bullets,

is machetes, is
acid baths for bones,
choruses of prayers
from those in torture church.
Hermanita of Perpetual

Sorrow, what flowers
do we hand you—we
who die now too.
We who dangle nude
and burned from bridges,

we who hoped
to see our daughters
run through sunlight, only
chased by waves
not bleeding

yet,
but laughing.

Table of Contents

Exordium 1

You Who Seek Grace from a Distracted God 3

CE 9

Listen 11

Valley of the Palms 13

Codex Luna 17

Siege Communiqué 26

Arizona Lamentation 28

Sombra 30

Typewriter 31

Skunks 36

Fall Rain 42

Irrigation Canal Codex 43

Help Me 47

Walking Backward in the Dark 51

Roadmaster '56 56

Poema 58

Tecolote Canyon 59

OME 67

48 Roadsongs 69

Sonoran Desert Sutras 84

YEI 91

Teocalli Blues 93

Ditch Turtles 96

The Duck 98

Elk 105

La cara perdida 106

There Is a Town in Mexico 107

Song of Praise 109

Love Song 112

Definition 114

Bravo 88 115

Codex Colibrí 120

The Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Chicago Haiku 123

(asshole) 127

Incident Report 135

Canción al final de un día de sombras 142

Lines for Neruda 145

Pinche Ernesto 148

Tijuana Codex 149

The Tijuana Book of the Dead 150

NAHUI 159

Insomnia Machine 161

16 Lane 162

Darling Phyl 188

HYMN 191

Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem 193

Editorial Reviews

01/19/2015
Urrea (The Devil’s Highway) takes a mystic’s eye to lyrical poems of and about the U.S.-Mexico border. He has an undeniable technical skill and his poems move adroitly through rich images, using physicality to make history (personal, cultural, and national) immediately present. As one poem redolently states, “My sisters brought undocumented scents to sweeten/ the valleys. Their perfume settled on roadsides, misted/ over bloodstain, rattlesnake, bootprint, guard dog, flash/ light.” Likewise, Urrea displays accomplished movement in tight, driving narratives and poems that end with disarmingly succinct and arresting lines. The poet works through both horror and redemptive grit, and while the skill is consistent, the collection as whole would benefit from a trim, as the subject matter that engages at the start feels tired by conclusion. Even so, the book includes many moments of touching insight and poems that readers will rightfully celebrate. One such poem, “The Duck,” ends, “I left him/ to rest/ until/ he too/ rose/ to his own/ impossible/ going”; for moments like that, it’s worth it to keep reading. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"A gorgeous, engaging collection . . . [Urrea] captures the song and spirit of people who might otherwise be invisible . . . As difficult as the subject matter may be, the writing is radiant, showing how the worth of human beings can’t be dimmed by a border fence or hot-button politics."—Washington Post

"Urrea’s facility with language (he writes in English and Spanish, at times in the same poem) and with sound is absolutely striking . . . Readers won’t dispute Urrea’s storytelling ability, as many of these poems are efficiently packaged narratives of seemingly real people at the real border, burdened with desire and pain and oppression, and even routine; nor will they be able to dispute this book’s tremendous, thumping heart." —Library Journal

"He has an undeniable technical skill and his poems move adroitly through rich images, using physicality to make history (personal, cultural, and national) immediately present....Urrea displays accomplished movement in tight, driving narratives and poems that end with disarmingly succinct and arresting lines....[T]he book includes many moments of touching insight and poems that readers will rightfully celebrate." —Publishers Weekly

"This most recent book of poems pays homage to the bloodshed and homicide that has become a hallmark of American drug wars, transporting readers from the vast expanse of the Sonoran Desert to urban decay in downtown Chicago. [Tijuana Book of the Dead] oscillates between brutal ultraviolence ... rapturous beauty ... and fanciful whimsy....Peppering lyrics with shoe polish, hair tonic, and wood varnish, Urrea echoes originators of Latino literature, such as Luis Valdez and Lalo Delgado, bridging literary generations in unflinching, evocative verse." —Booklist

"The Tijuana Book Of The Dead is overflowing with stance and heat, truthfulness and lyric musicality. No surprise, Urrea is masterful in telling the right parts of a story; his craftsmanship is formidable in its ease and transparency. I love this collection’s astringent comedy and corresponding moments of outrage and despair, the ways it insists on ethical consciousness in an epoch of numbing and puerile ironies. So it’s possible that “Poetry makes nothing happen,” directly, immediately, but it’s clear Urrea understands the essential and clarifying effect poetry has on people’s souls over time. Urrea understands the essential and clarifying effect poetry has on people’s souls over time." — Erin Belieu

“An award-winning poet, fiction writer and essayist, Urrea should be required reading for anyone living in the Southwest. Pure Urrea means being part Mexican, part Indian and part gringo. Reading his work means getting lost in stories that have both fable-like romance and visceral hopelessness, in voices that shift beautifully from sharp and quick-witted to meditative and soft.”—San Diego Union Tribune

“Jaunty, bawdy, gritty, sweet…a bottomless comic energy and a heart large enough to accept—even revel in—all of human folly.”—Stewart O'Nan, author of Songs for the Missing

From the Publisher

02/15/2015
Urrea, a Pulizer Prize finalist for the nonfiction The Devil's Highway and an award winner in fiction and poetry as well, offers what his publisher calls a kind of "love song" for life at the U.S.-Mexico border. Like Walt Whitman in his obsessive songs, Urrea tries to put readers in a rhythmic, aphoristic trance: "listen like saguaros listening/ to cactus wrens, coyotes, night/ owl: listen like the owl/ listen like the owl's prey/ jittery in rocks beneath bighorn's/ clocking feet." Urrea's facility with language (he writes in English and Spanish, at times in the same poem) and with sound is absolutely striking, but this book is 200 pages and six sections on the same treatise. VERDICT As Whitman's masterpiece can attest, such an outpouring necessitates some failures in the mix. That said, readers won't dispute Urrea's storytelling ability, as many of these poems are efficiently packaged narratives of seemingly real people at the real border, burdened with desire and pain and oppression, and even routine; nor will they be able to dispute this book's tremendous, thumping heart.—Stephen Morrow, Hilliard, OH

Library Journal