Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (Camino del Sol)

This is the third installment of a memoir. I actually read this book first, and it is beautifully detailed. Urrea's narrative is at times beautiful, and at other times haunting. He shares those experiences that people rarely talk about (the odd cruelties of parents), and how we as children just deal with them.

He describes his family's move from Tijuana to the United States, and how this impacted his parents relationship, and specifically how it impacted their economic lives.

Urrea is a great writer. A hidden treasure.

What an amazing voice! He has a way of describing something so different from my experience by making it familiar. All the while he is doing this he is courting me with his amazing grasp of language and complete vulnerability. Wow.

This collection of essays from the author's life experiences were written in prose-like language, alternating with story-tellling and occasional rants. There were parts of this autobiography that I enjoyed. The author's caustic wit was most apparent when discussing his feelings of isolation regarding his mixed Mexican-Caucasian heritage. His experiences of racism and disdain for intolerance was a primary theme throughout the narrative. I think I would have enjoyed this book more had it not been so disturbing and sad. While you can't judge a book about an author's life over whether it was happy or dysphoric, it made for a rather depressing read. His experiences of abuse from his father were barely lightened by his near adoption by his show more fictive kin/godparents in San Diego. His years of pseudoadoption taught the author about love and joy, something he had not been aware of prior to those familial experiences. I wish the rest of his story had been as optimistic but unfortunately, this was not the case. show less

Urrea writes a meandering book with tidbits that try to get at the struggle of being born Mexican and White non-Hispanic ---unfortunately, although at times charming, his story never rings true to this struggle...he goes from autobiographical writing to story telling to prose ... a strange style of writing and at the end I had the sense that he just wanted to finish the book.