" SHE GAVE ME A LIFE " After Luis Alberto Urrea ’ 77 took a writing workshop with visiting author Ursula Le
Guin ( right ), the two formed a lifelong friendship and mentorship . Read Urrea ' s essay following Le Guin ' s death in 2018 at tritonmag . com / leguin
Urrea was wounded by the criticism , yet understood it . “ I was writing because I knew I would die if I didn ’ t ,” he says , recalling the many reworkings of the story . But he didn ’ t return it to the English department — not for credit at least . Pei had become a friend by then , and submitted the story as Urrea ’ s audition for a coveted space in a visiting writer ’ s workshop . It worked — and Urrea would finish his college career having been taught by one of his longtime idols , the writer Ursula K . Le Guin , who would become one his first literary champions .
“ WE WRITERS ARE THE RAW NERVE of the universe ,” Urrea recalls Le Guin saying in class . “ Our job is to go out and feel things for people , then to come back and tell them how it feels to be alive . Because they are numb . Because we have forgotten .” She was already a legend to him , this tiny woman with the signature bobbed hair , captivating Urrea with offhand wisdom in and out of the classroom , and especially one night when Pei brought him to her apartment . It was the night she brought up Urrea ’ s story about his father , the one that got him admitted into her class . She explained that she was editing an anthology , and she wanted to buy it . “ That was when she started to train me to be a professional writer ,” Urrea says . “ She discovered me . She workshopped the crap out of me , and she would continue to guide me for years .”
A major publication while still in school was unheard-of success for a young writer , but circumstances had still left Urrea a different person upon graduation . The death of his father had sent his family into financial destruction ; he graduated only to work the graveyard shift at a local 7 / 11 . He was free falling before his new life could even take shape .
Urrea taught Chicano Studies classes at San Diego ’ s Mesa College , but ultimately found a greater direction and sense of purpose while translating for a missionary group that served those living in abject poverty over the border in Mexico . Urrea calls the experience “ a strange spiritual awakening ”— this was his father ’ s country , after all , the place where he was born , where he would visit family , but what he saw was a world unknown . He lived among those who subsisted on what they found in the Tijuana garbage dumps . People sleeping in boxes , picking trash , eating dead dogs , selling their bodies and sleeping in hand-dug tunnels under ruined buildings . “ It was a world of witness ,” he says . “ There was love and horror and violence . I was with the poorest of the poor , had their stink on me , their tears on me , and I just realized that nobody cared . There ’ s this whole world of people who just have no hope and no voice .”
As a translator , he was the voice between two worlds , a bridge between unspeakable affliction and humanitarian outreach . And yet , he again found no way to communicate this when he came home to San Diego . It was a half-hour drive between two vastly different lands — one where he fed malnourished babies , picked lice off children , watched people die . “ Then you come home to your mom , your friends and your girlfriend . I found myself unable to talk about it ,” says Urrea .
But again , he could write . Urrea kept a journal throughout it all , and also penned a border column for the San Diego Reader newspaper , a job he would refer to as being “ a nightmare correspondent .” But when the nightmares he witnessed began to settle in on him , and he realized he ’ d seen so much within a span of 50 miles yet never anything outside of it , he knew he had to get away . He reached out to Pei , who was by then at Harvard , and asked him for a job — as a janitor , anything — just something that could lend a new perspective . Pei responded , ultimately inviting Urrea to join him at Harvard , but in a very unexpected role : a teacher in expository writing .
28 TRITON | SPRING 2019