Best Reader stories of the late 1980s
Reader book issue, Coronado’s Don Zub, tough cop, actor kills mom, vice cop busted, candid dancing instructor. Otay Mesa's death of farming
8:30 a.m., June 23
Luis Urrea
Born in Tijuana, Urrea is a Mexican-American novelist, poet, and essayist. He wrote feature stores for the Reader from 1990 through 1994.
Articles by Luis Urrea
Dalton's Luck: A San Diego Mystery
An unpublished novel about the Mexican border
The assassins spotted Dalton Lee in the Miami airport. Later after it was all over, he'd remember that moment when they locked eyes and he smiled like he smiled at everyone. Often he would doubt ...
A Living Cloud: the Vagaries of Literary Fame
Luis Urrea takes book tour media to Tijuana dump.
Visiting the Tijuana dump is no different from visiting a friend at work. It is, after all, a factory. And the trash-pickers are busy — too busy to worry about lazy gringos wandering about.
Death sometimes unites them
Underprivileged Tijuanan brothers learn about grief the hard way.
Nobody knew what happened to the boys’ parents. Not even the boys — Chacho, Elijio, Carlos, and Jorge — could explain what had happened to them. As is so often the case in Tijuana, one ...
TJ is the haunted city
They’d give tortillas to us plain — good enough! Or they’d roll a few drops of lemon juice in one, or a pinch of salt, or both. I ate a couple of these mini-tacos while I waited.
Homeboy on the Range
Logan Heights comes to me in Colorado and Wyoming
Mexicans out here lie low. I know a Chicana poet who teaches at the University of Colorado, and every semester or so, some genius in a truck calls her a “greaser” or an “Injun.”
Tijuana cops don't get no respect
Hard to avoid mordida on $50 a week
He flicked on the siren. It whooped satisfactorily, sounding like a television show. "Muevete, pendelo" muttered to the cars that blocked his way as he maneuvered the Rio de Tijuana thoroughfare. I glanced at the ...
Wanna Sniff, Hombre?
Glue-snigging urchins in old Tijuana
His name is Andres. He awakens with the sun. He lies in bed as long as he feels like it, picking the crust of glue off his upper lip. It’s white and vague as milk ...
Back To School
Mr. Van Winkle asked the Student Council Reps, to indicate to the classes that if they can convince him through sound logical arguments that they should ride skateboards to school that he will reconsider his position.
Do you make these embarrassing mistakes when you cuss in Mexican?
Dirty words don't translate all that well from English to Spanish
Like Australians calling each other bastard, Mexican men tend to refer to each other as cabron all the time. Listen to them at the bars in TJ: it’s cabron this and cabron that.
