Into the Beautiful North
Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village--they've all gone north. While watching the film The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men--her own "Siete Magnificos"--to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.
Filled with unforgettable characters and prose as radiant as the Sinaloan sun, Into the Beautiful North is the story of an irresistible young woman's quest to find herself on both sides of the fence.
About Luis Alberto Urrea
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, Urrea has won numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays. The Devil's Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. An historical novel, The Hummingbird's Daughter tells the story of Teresa Urrea, sometimes known as the Saint of Cabora and the Mexican Joan of Arc. The book, which involved 20 years of research and writing, won the Kiriyama Prize in fiction and, along with The Devil's Highway, was named a best book of the year by many publications.
Urrea's most recent novel, Queen of America, is a sequel to the bestselling The Hummingbird's Daughter. A short story from Urrea's collection, Six Kinds of Sky, was recently released as a stunning graphic novel by Cinco Puntos Press. Mr.Mendoza's Paintbrush, illustrated by artist Christopher Cardinale, has already garnered rave reviews and serves as a perfect companion to Into the Beautiful North as it depicts the same village in the novel.
Urrea has also won an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America for best short story (2009, Amapola in Phoenix Noir). His first book, Across the Wire, was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the Christopher Award. Urrea also won a 1999 American Book Award for his memoir, Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life and in 2000, he was voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame following the publication of Vatos. His book of short stories, Six Kinds of Sky, was named the 2002 small-press Book of the Year in fiction by the editors of ForeWord magazine. He has also won a Western States Book Award in poetry for The Fever of Being and was in The 1996 Best American Poetry collection. Urrea's other titles include By the Lake of Sleeping Children, In Search of Snow, Ghost Sickness and Wandering Time.
Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Urrea has taught at Harvard, the University of Colorado, and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. He lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Visit the author at: www.luisurrea.com.
Interview with the author
(courtesy of Hachette Book Group)
What inspired you to write ‘Into the Beautiful North?’
Three things moved me to write the book: First, I was sick of immigration/ border writing. It started to feel like it was all the same, making all the same points, by all the same writers. Second was my fascination with small- town life in both Mexico and the United States and the huge cultural changes going on in both places that I never see documented. And, finally, although it is a painful book in many ways, I wanted to write something that made me laugh out loud every day.
You were born in Tijuana but moved to California when you were four. How has your background influenced your writing and the different ways in which you’ve written about the U.S.- Mexican border?
Paradoxically, it makes me both an insider and an outsider. Many writers who write about the border are tourists. People from the border often resent these carpetbaggers who show up for a week or a month and then share their wisdom with the world. At the same time, it’s useful for a writer to be a half step removed from the general current because we are observers. I feel that it gives me a fresh perspective on my country — both of them.
How did the experience of writing this fictional adventure differ from that of writing your nonfiction book ‘The Devil’s Highway?’ Knowing what you know about the grim realities that illegal immigrants face, was it difficult to novelize — and even satirize — such truisms?
My experience of this situation predates The Devil’s Highway by a lifetime. Not only is my own history intimately involved with these issues, but I spent a substantial number of years doing relief work on the border and my first books were about places like the Tijuana garbage dump. What you need to remember about people is that they are complex and complete. The garbage pickers, the “illegal aliens,” the border patrol agents, the missionaries are all funny people. The point is not that you are poor; the point is how you are poor. Everybody has a story.
Speaking of which, why did you decide to inject so much humor into the book?
Because I write funny books. I didn’t inject humor into the book — that sounds like you’re basting a turkey. The humor always, for me, rises from the story, the characters, and the milieu. It’s just the way my soul works. I have often said in interviews that I write the funniest tragedies in town.
Is the idyllic — if off the beaten track — town of Tres Camarones based on an actual place?
Yes, it is. It’s based on my father’s hometown, a place as mythic to me as some of the villages in Latin American novels are to those authors. It existed all through my childhood as a myth and a tall tale, thus it bonded with my DNA.
John Sturges’ film ‘The Magnificent Seven’ was one of the main catalysts for the epic journey of Nayeli, Yolo, and Vampi. Has a book or a movie ever influenced you in a similarly profound way?
Absolutely. I’m a magpie picking up shiny objects to take back to the nest all day long. I write with the ghosts of 12 authors, 13 movie directors, 14 musicians, and Steve McQueen in the room.
‘The Magnificent Seven’ was essentially a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece ‘Seven Samurai’, transporting the original’s story from feudal Japan to the American frontier. In turn, you reset the story in contemporary North America. How specific is location to your books — that is, could someone “remake” them in a different setting and era?
I think my books are pretty site- specific. Like much of the literature of the American West, it is imperative to my writing that place (landscape) be a main character in the story. Certainly in something like The Hummingbird’s Daughter, the land itself is a mystical participant. I feel that in The Devil’s Highway and Into the Beautiful North as well.
Aunt Irma and Atomiko are two of the most memorable characters in the novel: both are larger than life and possess stubborn ideologies that portray them as being tougher than they really are. What inspired you to include these personalities, and are they based upon anyone you know?
Atomiko is largely the product of my own sick mind. But if you go to the source, ‘Seven Samurai’, you know automatically who Atomiko is. He is Toshiro Mifune, the unwashed, unloved rogue Ronin warrior. But the personality traits are based on many scruffy, indomitable border rats, not least of which is my cousin Hugo, the family’s notorious pistolero. Aunt Irma? Well, I have a terrifying Aunt Irma who is the retired women’s bowling champ of Mexico . . . you figure it out!
Why Kankakee, Illinois?
I wrote a column for the New York Times about Kankakee, and the reception Nayeli and Tacho get in Kankakee should at least imply why Kankakee. It’s a town that moved me and it’s a population that inspired me and I always hopelessly, passionately, root for the underdog.
Reviews
Publishers Weekly, 01/19/2009
Nayeli, the taqueria worker of Urrea's fine new novel is a young woman in the poor but tight-knit coastal Mexican town of Tres Camarones who spends her days serving tacos and helping her feisty aunt Irma get elected as the town's first female mayor. Abandoned by her father who headed north for work years before, Nayeli is hit with the realization that her hometown is all but abandoned by men, leaving it at the mercy of drug gangsters. So Nayeli hatches an elaborate scheme inspired by The Magnificent Seven: with three friends, she heads north to find seven Mexican men and smuggle them back into Mexico to protect the town. What she discovers along the way, of course, surprises her. Urrea's poetic sensibility and journalistic eye for detail in painting the Mexican landscape and sociological complexities create vivid, memorable scenes. Though the Spanglish can be tough for the uninitiated to detangle, the colorful characters, strong narrative and humor carry this surprisingly uplifting and very human story.
Kirkus Reviews, 4/1/2009
Three Mexican señoritas cross the border with a gay escort in this good-humored road novel from Urrea. The coastal town of Tres Camarones has gone from sleepy to desolate since its men went north to "Los Yunaites," looking for work. Luckily there are two strong women in town. Middle-aged Irma, a no-nonsense former bowling champion, is running for mayor. Her niece Nayeli, a dark-skinned beauty one year out of high school, is her campaign manager. Nayeli misses her father, one of the migrants, and treasures his one postcard, from Kankakee, Ill. After Irma is elected, Nayeli turns her attention to the crime wave she sees coming—though all we’ve been shown are two out-of-luck drug dealers. Inspired by a screening of The Magnificent Seven at the Cine Pedro Infante, she decides to head north and bring back Mexican cops or soldiers to help her deal with the bandidos. Joining Nayeli in her quest are Yolo and Vampi, her "homegirls," and Tacho, gay owner of La Mano Caída Taquería and Internet café. The premise is weak, and Urrea keeps everything cartoon simple so he can get his show on the road. The town takes up a collection and gives the girls a big send-off. In Tijuana, Nayeli fights off some bad guys before being befriended by Atómiko, ersatz warrior and authentic trash-picker, who insists on joining their mission. Using tunnels, they cross the border successfully on their second attempt. (This is well-covered ground for Urrea: See his nonfiction border trilogy, beginning with Across the Wire, 1992.) In a silly bit of farce, Tacho is arrested as a suspected al-Qaeda member. Meanwhile, the ladies spend time in San Diego. Their recruiting goes well. Yolo and Vampi find boyfriends. Nayeli, still single, goes back on the road with the liberated Tacho.
Booklist, 4/1/2009
If you are a judo-practicing, butt-kicking 19-year-old Mexican woman in a town with only one youngish man—and he’s gay—you might decide to go to El Norte to recruit illegal immigrant men to revive your village. And Naveli, a twenty-first-century female Don Quixote with a three-person posse that includes her gay boss, does exactly that. This wonderfully funny, occasionally sad novel combines elements of the picaresque with the joie de vivre and startling coincidences of a road-trip movie. Urrea’s knowledge of immigrant life, the rigors of poverty, and how being poor affects everyday existence provides the gritty details that make characters and places come alive. Sardonic humor, rugged details of the working-class poor, and the exotic, often bizarre characters all contribute to an outstanding reading treat. Fans of Urrea’s nonfiction and his Kiriyama Prize winner, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, will probably not expect this lush, rollicking novel of quests, self-discovery, and romance. But—once committed to the trip—readers will have no trouble staying till the bittersweet and triumphant end.
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