Focus; The Hummingbirds Daughter

In this first hour of focus 580 we'll be talking with writer and poet Luis Alberto Urrea about his recent novel. It's titled The Hummingbird's Daughter. He teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago. The book came out earlier this spring. The story is set in Mexico in the late 1800s and it's all about a girl named Theresa. Her mother was a poor Indian barely a girl herself when she gives birth to Teresa. Her father was a rich landowner to raise a shows a talent for healing and when she is still quite young becomes a midwife. Then she has a brush with death and it leaves her with a mysterious power to heal that she says comes from God. Power to heal just with her touch. Some people call her a saint. But the government of Mexico sees her as a dangerous revolutionary. The book has been very well received it's been out now for a couple of months. If you're interested in reading the books you certainly should head down to the bookstore and look for it is published by Little Brown. Let me tell you just a little bit more about our guest. He has written a number of books has published poetry he's the author. One other of one of the book I want to mention a particular book

titled The Devil's Highway which was a national bestseller and also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He's the recipient of a number of awards including an American Book Award and the Landon Award for nonfiction He's also been inducted into the the Latino Literary Hall of Fame. His poetry has been collected in the best American poetry as most recent book six kinds of sky won the 2002 forward magazine book of the Year award the editor's choice for fiction. And as I mentioned he teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Not only is The Hummingbird's Daughter a story of some grand sweeping themes like revolution it's also a family story and as it happens it is the story of his family. All of the main characters in this story and many of the events actually happened. And we'll talk about that this morning. Running in this part of the show. Questions of course are welcome as always. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 is our number here in Champaign Urbana. But if you would happen to be listening in Chicago for example or around Illinois and Indiana and it would be a long distance

call use the toll free line that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Professor Hello. Good morning David. Thanks for talking with us. Thanks for having me. As as I've read a number of articles about the book and little interviews with you I think in many places that you've said in in one way or another that this was a story that you had been wanting to tell. And in fact researching for. Time long long time I you know I always tell people that I researched it for 20 years but in reality I've probably lived with it my whole life. You know I mean I first heard stories about her when I was a child. We would have family gatherings and you know and I always tell the story when I'm on tour that I had this aunt that we called La flaca and she was a very.

A wild woman very strong character. And she she was blind in one eye and chain smoker and wore sort of late 50s cat eye glasses and she would gather us in the dark on Christmas nights and was illuminated only by a kerosene heater in the middle of the room. When these sort of lurid orange glow and she would tell us these tales of her wild eye looking off in the distance and one of the tales of that we had a yucky aunt who was a saint and who could fly and heal the sick and raise the dead. You know and at the time I thought well that's really great but I didn't really believe it. You know it was part of a very elaborate lore that my family had to offer at all times you know there was a story for everything. And you know I've learned touring around the country so much said that almost

everybody at least with some semi rural roots has great histories of these wild stories no matter what your culture is you know of the conjure man or the healer woman or the root worker or the midwife You know there's always an ancestor that had these kind of earth skills. So she was mine and I didn't know she was real until probably nine hundred seventy eight or nine when I was working as a bilingual T.A. at a community college in one of the professors I was working with happened to recognize my name and put two and two together and showed me a book with an article about her up to that moment I hadn't known she was an actual historical figure and I was absolutely stunned that somebody had written something about. And you. So then you actually went and did research found out that there had been some things written about her there and newspaper articles there had been a book. So as I said when I was trying to do a brief introduction if you take a look at the story and on your

website in fact you have the story there you can and if you've read the book you can see that the main characters to raze and her father and the medicine woman and yet again they and all of the people in there and the things that happened in that book apparently actually happened there was a REAL TO RAISE of Cobourg and all of these things that were attributed to her did. Indeed happen they did. Yeah it's kind of funny because you know the critical response has been of course delightful on my end. I'm always happy to get good reviews and bad reviews but they keep making a point that it's a magic realist epic and we think that's odd since the really peculiar material in the book what one would identify as magical is the actual historical witnessed stuff and most of the imagined stuff is the sort

of daily you know dull material of what did they eat and did they wear. But the actual events in the book are pretty much a straight record of what happened to her. And you know some of her development and and so forth and certain aspects of it. The details of her training were things that don't exist in any record. You know partially I think because Mexico although they claim not to be is a kind of a racist society certainly you know slanted against its indigenous people in a lot of ways. And so her indigenous upbringing and you know her female training have been glossed over by historians so that sort of training period material in the novel actually came from medicine women who took me in and tried to teach me so I could I could give an accurate portrait of their work. So in that

sense I feel like it's pretty close to what she probably did experience in training. There's a character that is important in the book whose influence is felt although he doesn't really appear directly and I'm thinking of Porfirio Diaz Yeah perhaps as a way of establishing a kind of context for the story. You could talk a little bit about what was going on in Mexico at this point around the turn of the last century sort of the late 1800s early 1900s. Right. Well you know yes. The Classic Latin American dictator. He thought he was you know if Garcia Marquez could have written you know any one of his dictator books about about this man he was a he was indigenous himself with indigenous roots but was an iron handed strongman who at the time was involved in a great kind of land grab in the north of Mexico and he was really

trying to establish Mexico as a world power as an economic power. You know trying to copy what had happened in the United States of manifest destiny in a lot of ways. And so at the time of Ted the feat that he was involved in a very brutal campaign of of of land grabbing against the Yaki people and some of the related tribes around them and they were they were you know taking people off their land they were sending them to concentration camps. They were transporting tribal people in train cars. It's very reminiscent of awful things that happened in Europe later. And a lot of the dispossessed were sent to contend the ruin you could turn to work on plantations and it was so brutal what was happening to the people that they actually had schedules that had worked out how long it would take to work a person to death. And the Standard

Life expectancy after you were captured by the army and taken off your land was six weeks six weeks from capture to death. So they kept a pretty strong flow of human bodies going into southern Mexico to these plantations and the lands were then sold or or given to Europeans and North Americans who you know came in and started mining operations ranching and farming operations and so forth. And there was quite a strong push toward revolution beginning even then allowed given it was one of the men who was in early imaginer of revolution. And I think he wanted to be seen as the father of the Mexican Revolution one of the small tragedies I think in his life is that he was sort of bypassed by history he didn't he didn't get to be a main player in the in the big revolution but he certainly helped fomented. And to see

those sort of accidentally cast into this role of revolutionary leader in that she because of her miraculous acts and her preaching had attracted so many indigenous people that she was seen as as being the spearhead of a movement that was quite dangerous to the power. Our guest Luis Alberto Urrea he teaches creative writing at University of Illinois in Chicago we're talking about his recent novel it's titled The Hummingbird's Daughter It's published by Little Brown. Questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 the toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. It's the sort of political atmosphere that sets the story in motion when and who and what he does. Father Don Thomas who is a rancher in Siena law which is one of the states in Mexico that's on the it's on the coast is on the ocean on the Pacific side. He ends up backing a local politician who has an anti Diaz Riteish and he

loses so Damaso decides to avoid any possibility of reprisals to uproot everybody and they move to Sonora the north which is and that's a state that Mexico and northern Mexico that borders on to Arizona. So here this is a this is an enormous enormous change a very difficult journey and. A total change of ecosystem because they're moving to the desert. Talk a little bit perhaps you can talk a bit about the difference between those two places between Sinaloa and some more. All right well you know Sinaloa is a really interesting spot because right about where they were living in Siena low is the Tropic of Cancer. So you know you can already you can project what the landscape is like at the northern end of some pretty rich subtropical landscapes so they were they were living you know almost in the buffer zone between more areas

southwestern landscape and subtropical Junglee stuff which can be found in the south of Siena LOA. So they were they were used to mango groves and you know sugarcane fields and swamps and estuaries and all that sort of thing. But they also had cactus and so forth that when they went north they entered into this. What to them was the wasteland you know the apocalyptic deserts where they were very afraid to go the home of the Apache who was a dedicated and ferocious enemy of the Mexicans. So you know I mean the Apaches had had recently run a raid all the way from Sonora down to my supply on our current one of our current you know happy playgrounds burning cities and towns so people were quite terrified to go north into this land they didn't know what they were going to find. And. You know I make some a little fun of it. The difficulties with dry air after having been moist all their lives. Things like that but

you know it was really a strange and and frightening transformation for them. And you know it's important to know that before the Mexican Revolution you know the average Mexican citizen had never traveled very far at all in fact most Mexicans had never been over 100 miles from wherever their home was. And so you know these are some of the first great adventurers in a way. And it was because of Tomas who led this mad Exodus you know to safety because Sonora was a more welcoming area he was not in political trouble there and one of the interesting little historical sidelights about him is that he was the first supposedly according to the record one of the first men to introduce domesticated bees to the state of Sonora at the beginning of the book who we meet Teresa's mother. Her name is was is it that is she's a she's just a girl herself. Right. And she is carrying the child of the other on Don

Thomas. And the inn at some point he he discovers that realizes that to receive is in fact his daughter and she she gives birth to the child and fairly soon after that leaves leaves the story turns the baby over to her sister who abuses her until she's taken under the wing of who recognizes that or recognizes some power interest and it is her in Teresa's mothers who are her nickname is the hummingbird that's where the title will come from. So is there some sort of symbolic significance or what is the symbolic significance of the hummingbird because the hummingbird continues to turn up. Yeah in the story. Well I mean bird is is quite sacred. One of the one of the roundabout things I can tell you to explain some of the book is that in 1995 I went down to the Tucson area to be closer to the yucky people and to try to you know to try to learn some things on the ground and not just out of books.

And I was lucky enough to encounter two branches of my family that I didn't know before I went to Tucson and you know they were there one branch was a patch and one branch was Yaki and my Yahoo was the related tried the Yaki. And in that family I had a cousin who is a healer woman and so she started teaching me and I'm sorry there goes the drought. In her training with me she started telling me more and more about the humming bird and the humming bird is important in that tradition for a lot of reasons. If you if you look at sort of indigenous desert metaphor you can see some of the animals taking the place of some of the other animals that we might find in the Bible for example and I would say that the hummingbird sometimes takes the place of what we you know and in Judeo-Christian cultures talk about the dove I mean bird is a messenger of grace.

I'm a very hairy prayers and messages to God and carries prayers amiss just back from God often appears in dreams giving you symbolic objects. You know sometimes appears in the real world at cardinal points in your life sometimes actually leads the way down a path. Very interesting bird and very interesting sort of folkloric Lifeway position he holds with some of these desert tribes to Wacko's West savage Pima. A lot of the people. So I tried to by trying to just pay attention to the Hummingbird's position in the world that she would have lived in. Which is where that came from so The Hummingbird's Daughter certainly the most obvious level she's the daughter of Anna Chavez but on a deeper level she's sort of the daughter of grace. She says after she has that after this

event happens in her life she has this brush with death. I don't want to say too much I want to give so much of the story away that people will say well I don't need to read it now yeah. She has this brush with death right and then her before she had this reputation of being able to to heal in the folk in the tradition of folk medicine again she becomes a midwife and she even though she is very young women who are about to give birth want to have her there she she seems to have a power to take their pain away. And right after this happens after this event happens in the book then it seems that she and even she comes into an even greater power although she is very careful to say that she's not the one who's doing it but she feels that that this is something that God is doing and that she is merely the conduit that saw in him in fact she even though that there's all this talk of her being a saint she herself in the book and also that the real terrorists never said that she was a saint. No in fact she was she fought against being called a Saint. You know

she always insisted I'm I'm just a woman I'm just a woman I just had this experience that you know what what her take was in her near-death experiences that she had met God and that God had given her a gift to bring back to his children and that she was not to profit from it and to give it freely. Well what I think interests me is that this is again one of those exams she as a figure is one of those examples of how different faith traditions. End up getting blurred and mixed up. Yes because she is. She is in part embracing Roman Catholicism but also is grounded in the the indigenous religious traditions and it's a little bit difficult to know exactly where she stands. Maybe it's a it is pardon the cliche. She's got one foot in each word yeah. Yeah. Well I think you know that's partially a product of the place and the time you know that those skate the speaking tribes like yucky people.

They they were syncretistic you know they had an actual blend of Catholicism an indigenous face. So I think that was part part of what made her. Philosophical pattern you know would help develop it. She was certainly brought up in an atmosphere where both things were equal in her mind in practice but on the other hand you know she was also the ultimate flowering of the mania that happened was rather apocalyptic and millenarian and it was it was very close in time to Woolfolk. And the ghost dancers north and you know if you if you studied were vocal he too was Christianized. So I think it was a you know way to try to forge a new world version of Christianity and she was actually quite vocal in her criticism of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church because they in her opinion

supported power over the rights of people. And there is this just makes me think of the man there as a leader. One of the people who lived in the area who called himself the pope of Mexico. Khrushchev is yeah he was the pope. Mexico. That's true. So there actually was such a person. Oh yeah. Khrushchev is in fact Paul Vander wood historian from California has a wonderful book about Khrushchev as in the time when cheek rebellion which is called God and guns against the great power of government and you know he was a real guy. And it was a real massacre you know the Mexican army annihilated a town for following to keep this intially and they massacred 300 people which again is an eerie echo of what happened at Wounded Knee with the ghost dancers so it's a very interesting sort of a mirror history of of indigenous warfare.

In the book one of the kind of debates or struggles I guess that rage is is is over spirituality and there is a great debate particularly between Teressa and her father. Yeah about religion and about the church because her father is a serious nonbeliever and who who sort of thinks that it's all it's all bunk and she is a person who is very much a person of the spirit and she feel. She feels that she's talked to God so she obviously believed it. I wonder did you enjoy putting yourself in both having to take up both sides of that debate. Oh yeah it was a riot. Yeah as a writer it was it was a lot of fun I mean I'm in some ways the book is about her dad more than anything I think is you know much of the story though it focuses on her and her training and her spirit. A lot of the stories about Tomas is on struggle. I mean he wants to believe

he wouldn't mind believing that he's he's a you know he's a rationalist to ease a reasonable man and he he just can't find a philosophical or scientific or or rational explanation for all this stuff. You know Yet he he stands beside her with with surprising loyalty. And you know he's a man who I think surprised himself and everybody around him over and over again he also through the story he's asked to make these tremendous sacrifices in these tremendous leaps and he does so. And I think you know it's I get the strong feeling from him that he was often sitting in a dark room with a quick snifter of brandy thinking What the hell is happening. You know because when the when the pilgrimages began when she heard her fanatic started showing up they destroyed everything he had worked to create. They destroyed the ranch they ruined everything and then suddenly they were

you know he and his daughter are cast out I'm me. Think about what he lost. It's overwhelming. Yet he really did stand beside her at the moment when the Mexican army was going to kill her he really did put himself between their weapons and her body and said basically shoot her through me then. And they didn't want to shoot him. You know it's part of the reason she was spared. One of the stories that you tell in early on is we're talking a bit earlier about the fact that there the family is uprooted and moves for yeah because of politics and moves to Sonora. And when they get there to this family property there in Kabul or other places just almost before they got there has been raided by the Akis who are living. The neighborhood he sets out to by himself to go and talk with them and goes and works out a deal makes peace gets back to the people who were captured and Mork Saudi peaceful neighborly relationship

with the Iraqis. That happens in the novel that actually happened actually did that. Yeah it does. That's one of those you know Dances With Wolves fantasies right where I go to the Warriors and make them my pals but really did do it. And he was under you can imagine in the in the environment in which they lived in the situations that were going on he could have very easily turned back to the government and ingratiated himself immediately by saying you know the savages have attacked Let us go forth and annihilate them and they would have destroyed the village or his Cowboys would have done it. Instead he chose to go and face them. And there are conflicting I mean you know you have to cobble the story together from a lot of sources and some of them say he may have taken a couple of cowboy some of them said he went alone I preferred for the story sake that he go alone and I you know I believe he would have if he you know even if he did take cowboy he took one or two but I believe he probably did go by himself but he went and found. The village that was

responsible for the attack and talked to the elders and it so impressed them that this man would come out there and face them that they showed mercy to him. And then when they explained why that they were starving they were being exterminated by the government. They they had nowhere to turn. They thought they were at war with him too. Then he extended mercy to them in return and said You know I will I will dedicate 10 percent of all of our produce every year including our cattle to you so you will not go hungry again. And you know he struck up a peace accord of his own and he made his land you know safe ground for Yaki people not to be killed and hunted. So those that's you know that's I think that's the moment in which he really grows up. He's faced all these things and many of his adventures are sort of comedic and absurd including having to flee Sina law but suddenly he's confronted with a very serious life or death

issue. And I think he chooses life. And and I always respect him for that. Well the one for him I think he clearly at least is the character that you present in the story his riding out alone was a great moment. Of liberation for him the kind of freedom that he experiences is is something that he finds truly exhilarating. Right. I think you know I think it it liberates him in some ways ruins him too because he realizes after this long lonesome journey facing dangers and being completely free of all the constraints around him that for evermore he will feel trapped because you know he will have to be the butt they're on. He can't just be the the wandering the wandering adventurer he's going to have to buckle down. But he has that one intoxicating taste of freedom and

self-reliance and it means everything to him. And I think it gives him the kind of strength to face these strange events that are about to befall him. Well let me just introduce Again our guest for this part of focus 580 Luis Alberto Urrea he's teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois Chicago. He's a poet. He's the author of the book The Devil's Highway which is a nonfiction work. He was a finalist for the poll. The prize for nonfiction for that book in fact he'd discussed that book on our afternoon magazine program. Yeah not very long ago and in fact people want to hear the interview if they'll go to our web archive w i l l dot UIUC dot edu. You can hear that interview and you can look for the book as well as his novel The Hummingbird's Daughter It's published by Little Brown and should certainly be in the bookstores right now. Going back to you talked about what happened after to re say has her has her near-death experience and now demonstrates this remarkable healing ability that people thousands of people come

to the ranch and and literally camped out there waiting to be able to see here and as you say. The place is just destroyed and yet for Don Tomas doesn't really know quite what to do. Although he loves his daughter very much and on some level he must recognise her. Her power. So he he certainly doesn't chase all these people away but it it completely destroys the place and ultimately causes them so much trouble that they're exiled to of all places the United States. And again that this is another I keep I know I keep sort of saying this but again this is something that actually happened to get this out of the she you know she attracted such fervent believers and followers that you know people came from everywhere and they were. There were many reporters there so I was I was startled once I you know got deeply into the archives of things to keep finding eyewitness accounts and reporters accounts and there's a story in the novel about a man who is overheard in the crowd saying it is

She's no saint any woman that uses the bathroom you know as not a saint. And any woman who eats food like me She's no saint and the next day she calls the man forward and says you know as far as eating goes I eat mostly fruit vegetable and as far as the bathroom goes nothing I can do about that. But your wife is cheating on you and she and the and her lover waiting to kill you at home. That story which I thought was wonderful and amusing was actually collected by a brother of mine who in the 80s went into Sonora and interviewed for me on tape a hundred and one year old coot and then I was blind and about to die who had watched things you know eyewitness at the camp and no other historian ever got that story and the only one that got it so I was really thrilled of course to put that in the book. But every one of those kind of events is is I try to keep the

record so that you know that they're fanciful enough even as historical record you know. But they're there that they allegedly happen. She comes the attention of the Mexican government because in part because she attracts all of these people but also because in addition to doing healing she's she's got a political message she says where she's essentially telling people that the that their way that they have been treated is wrong that they have. Been victims of a terrible injustice and that that certainly was a very very dangerous message. It was and you know part of her message was fairly simple which was God gave a particular lens to particular people. This land was given to you. No one should take it away from you. Now you know when you tell a warrior people that that translates pretty quickly into well let's fight for it. And you know then she tried to do damage control later by saying don't try to

harm no one. But of course you know it was a fuse waiting to be lit and the Mexican government knew perfectly well that if that fuse got lit there would be terrible trouble they'd already had war upon war and they were engaged in a war with the Apaches that had you know wars with the Opata tribes and so they were they would themselves were trying to nip it in the bud and they initially wanted to execute her. But they realized if they executed her the wildfire would be worse. And that's how she was you know the next worst thing you could think to do is send her to the study. This was as people remember this was the man who it is said that immortal comment was said said to have said poor Mexico. So far from God so closely united. That's right so close to the United States so he puts her on a train and you know that they're they're perf. They were expecting the Indian warriors

to attack the train. So in some ways you know if you look at it it was a really amazing bit of of of political chicanery thinking well let's let them kill them herself you know kill her themselves. But she stopped this attack and you know the whole sort of climactic scene in the book which I want to give too much away I guess but there's a very slight mention that I saw in one of the histories that just gave me chills and that was that she was going through a canyon on this train and the Warriors instead of attacking stood along the tracks and held their weapons over their heads as she passed. And I thought oh my god that's just incredible. You know that's it but it was again you know it's hard when you go to the Mexican histories of the stuff you know you find these historians over and over again saying just outrageous. You know sort of woman hating commentary which which is really

interesting to see and people like we love. For example her very important teacher who was not only female but indigenous as completely a race. But to see that you know condescendingly written about that she's a hysterical female that the the saintliness was due to menstrual hysteria. But you know if I always tell people who are that it seems to me that if you believe Mexican historians this entire book is a you know an episode of PML you know and that's just it's just awful because it's such a huge history and it's such an important history. And you know then it's just gone disappeared and you really really dig and I you know I just I was doing it really at first as just a hobby as a gift to my own family to say look this is her story. You know that's really how it started just trying to gather the information for the family.

What was the position of the Catholic Church on this quote unquote saying big thumbs down. The scene of Kapoor they were not thrilled. You know part of the part of the catastrophe that befell her was was circuit writing priests who basically sent reports about her there. There's there are allegedly some reports in the Vatican archives from the field about her evil behavior which I would love to find out but I don't think the Vatican that forthcoming with things like that will have a historian acquaintance who was trying at one time to to get in their archives and find the reports. But you know one of the things that happened to her historically was that the priest by the Castello who who sort of had the circuit of northern Mexico and that Sierra region. Saw the pope of Mexico's church which was already in some trouble

because they had of course claim that they were the pope's not the pope. That they were worshipping with statues of her in the church which he considered a heresy. So essentially what happened was the military regional officer you know who was sort of in charge of that part of the desert where the ranch was sent a message to President in Mexico City that this girl was was fomenting Yaki unrest and preaching a kind of a secession thing. At the same time the priest sent a report which was forwarded to Mexico City. So unfortunately for everybody the reports arrived at the same time. And you can imagine vs you know in the same week hearing that not here she is in Sonora fomenting Yaki revolution but her followers in Chihuahua are arming themselves and beginning he's

thinking you know my God I'm losing the entire north because of this girl. She was only 19 years old. So he decided I'm going to squash this immediately and silence her. We have about 15 minutes left in this part of focus 580 with Luis Alberto Urrea He's professor at University of Illinois Chicago professor. English where he teaches creative writing the book we're talking about is The Hummingbird's Daughter published by Little Brown has been out now just a couple of months. And you should find it in the bookstore and it's a great story. If you'd like to talk with us by the way 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 1 4 5. Just the the the REAL to receive significant. Was she in prompting the Mexican Revolution. You know it's it's hard to say. I. You know when she left and came to the United States I think in in some ways she may have had a larger role than when she was in Mexico in that she began

writing editorials and writing broadsides and so forth. Get it. Certainly wanted to turn her into an engine of revolt. But she wrote some pretty inflammatory stuff just citing the numbers and the details of what the atrocities against the people were and her followers you know invaded the United States. They they came in from Sonora and invaded Nogales Arizona and they blew up the Customs House. And again in an eerie kind of echo of the ghost dancers at Pine Ridge Reservation they they didn't have those shirts that would stop bullets but they had pictures of her that they thought would stop bullets and they found out. You know to everyone's horror that they didn't in fact stop bullets and they were shot down in the streets of medallists that are famous pictures of them lined up dead on the sidewalk you know so that that certainly was one of the one of the again a fews lighter.

But you know D.A.'s was also smart in that having sent her to the United States I think he suspected that wild industrially hatching America would consume her and it ultimately did. You know she began a very American version of the story you know and she I mean she she she originally was living outside of Tucson and then so must moved her to El Paso and the flocks followed her so he dragged her up into the mountains to the Clifton Mar N.C. area where they got established and some family drama ensued and she ended up leaving Clifton or N.C. in some state of shame and went to San Jose California where she you know commensurate healing and began this wild American journey that took her to L.A. She lived to St. Louis she lived in Manhattan in a brownstone on the 9th. She had children there. You know she became a Gibson

Girl and won a beauty competition along the way and you start to really see in her American life this yearning beneath all of the saintliness to just be a normal young woman just once you know let me let me let me get fixed up once let me have my hair done and dress nicely just once let me be in love and be a mother you know and so in that sense her story I think is kind of a tragedy even though it's funny and there's a lot of joy in it I also think there's a lot of sorrow in it for her. And just there when you look at the details of your life if you had written that people would say I think you're pushing it a little bit. Yeah. But and. One thing that just really strikes me in reading her real story that that you have on your website is that she apparently was reunited with her mother on her deathbed.

Do you believe that was dying and and mom comes to the door after all in all this this time. I know. You know I've signed a contract to write the sequel. And you know on some level I feel like I should be writing an opera instead because everything is so grand in the story. But yeah it's like it's like the story closes down the way it begins you know the mother has her and disappears literally disappeared nobody knew whatever happened to her. At the end if that if he does life she died when she was 33. She's on her death bed with consumption going to die. And she says to everybody wait I can't I can't go yet. And lo and behold out of the blue for no reason with no explanation OK it appears. Nobody knows how nobody knows what in the world summoned her. She appears and goes in the room with Tennessee and they spend the day laughing and talking and holding hands and crying and all that sort of thing. And then

to see the call of everybody in that evening it says I can sleep now and die. And it just is one of those things that is you know it's too rich. But it's true. So you know here we go. We do have a caller here and about 10 minutes left and if other folks would like to call in ask questions you can do that 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 The callers in Indiana on our toll free line 1 4. Hello hello. In some ways it's beyond opera. There's no question about that. I wouldn't do it doing around because it's so interesting and innovative take up the time answer a question that's a lot of time that's waving. David shows you know you sort of why having an engineer see what's going to happen next. But you know to bring it back down to academic reality in some sense. The question about having photographs of her thinking they may stop bullets and then yes reviews fella talking about all that snow is saying you know yeah I guess things aren't supposed to go the

bathroom or were I to close. I just wonder if you can make a comment about that in a general sense. When they were shot and photographs were taken and I presume the other peoples would know about that. Does that lessen the admiration or you know it did it in it and I noticed talking Interestingly enough to a reporter for The Los Angeles Times who's actually quite an expert on Mexican folk Saints. We realize that the folk Saints are almost exclusively male and we couldn't come up with the female folk scene like Tennessee except for to see that it's really lasted and is searching. And it's interesting that aspects of regular humanity and womanhood with her diminished people's fervor in fact when she finally settled down and had her own children. On a on a very real level she wasn't forgiven by the people. It was almost like you know wait a minute how dare

you not be a virgin. You know how dare you not be a Madonna you know. And again she kept insisting I'm just a person I'm just a woman you know trying to pass on this thing it works through me I don't do it. And she wanted a real life she wanted a family. So yeah I think she was on some level not forgiven. And also concurrently which I think's really interesting as people sort of lost their passion for her and their faith in her her own gifts apparently diminished and near the end of her life she actually opened a clinic that started practicing western medicine because she said that she was just tired and her gifts had faded. So you know there's something about the two feeding each other. You know that the flame of the people's faith and passion for this thing certainly I think seems to inspire whatever height she could reach you know. You know so it's for I mean on the rational side on the side you know you can

really make a case for it being perhaps some kind of hypnotism or Mesmer ism Reiki healers are very interested in her because you know in my research I found for example that she didn't actually touch people but apparently would hold her hands near them and apparently I don't know much about Reiki but Reiki people apparently do this kind of healing with the you know the field of whatever around the body. So I really you know I have taken it as an item of faith that she really did the healings but I don't know what the engine was that drove them it might have just been the passion. You know if you believe strongly enough perhaps. You know an amazing thing happened to you I don't know. You know we were going to few decrees to go for that all gets worked out but yeah I guess you know I'm and I'm there with you on that and and you know I went and went through an extremely irrational stage in college and stuff and things do

happen that you know if it's not I don't call it you know super rational but there is something going on there and she was an incredible woman is no question about that and when you mention about being a Gibson garage about fell off my chair. Oh yeah. In fact this you know it's remarkable. We've put together a pretty good gallery now of pictures of her and her dad and allow Dylan stuff some and start putting those up on my website and I just wanted to say about the rational stuff you know when I first started working on this book I often tell the story but I I was I was friends with Linda Hogan I don't know if you know her the Native American writer and poet. And I went and I spent about two hours telling her the whole story. And I tried to weasel out of writing it and he kept saying Why don't you write this story. She'd say no it's your it you write it and I said I don't think I can get my Western mind around the details of this story and she said Honey the Western mind is a fever it will pass. And Ed you know I've gotta tell you that some of the weird stuff that happened to me

working on this especially when I began studying with actual Shaaban type people changed me forever. And you know my editor and I often joke that I should write a book about what happened writing the book because that was your own dreams like you know it certainly should be. People won't be reading it. There's no question about it. Firstly can gross my mind when I sort of was sort of summing this up there at the end here was that this lady you know just screams to be your book that screams to be you know some high school class or you know doing you know different cultures and women's issues and stuff because she's off a remarkable thing. Good luck. Thank you so much. We'll try real quick to squeeze one. More champagne County Line 1. Hello hi. I want to mention that there are few womenfolk shrinks but there are in Mexican culture the sort of archetype all figures I was thinking also the word of the woman the crying one the wailing and yeah yeah

yeah. And it seems to me that there's this but I saw that Similarly there and then I was wondering where that you know how this culturally comes about you're talking about juxtaposing wounded median and in this instance in sort of the needle. Indigent indigent reaction kind of thing there seems to be a structural thing going on there as well. I think so I think you know I think part of it was this kind of millennium fever happening you know or where there was a great change coming on that there was a you know a century change coming and people were really hoping almost against hope that that the world would be restored to them somehow. You know and and I guess I guess in some ways it was their version of the rapture that so fascinates people now you know thinking that it's going to be plucked away and whatever's going to happen in the world be remade that you know people were hoping so much that the dead would come back that the land would be restored to them that they could just go

back to their lives that they didn't. They didn't know what had happened to them. They didn't know what happened to their world. So I think there's a lot to be said for that. I'm very interested in that sort of continent wide kind of convulsion I think was happening. One of the historians said that at the time was to see those mountains bred messiahs like mushrooms after rain storm. And I think it's you know partially again that the passion and the desperation of the people themselves. We're going to have to stop my apologies to the caller for jumping in there but we're simply at the end of the time and I will again tell you that if you want to read the book I'm sure you can find it in the bookstores. Yeah it's The Hummingbird's Daughter is published by Little Brown. And you also might want to look at our guests earlier book the one that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. And this is a nonfiction book The Devil's Highway about people trying to come from Mexico to the United States. Yeah. And our guest Lisa

Alberto Urrea he teaches creative writing at University of Chicago. Thanks very much for talking so much. I thought it was a wonderful book I enjoyed it a much. Good talking to you. All right good talking to you too.