Urrea’s The Water Museum is a masterful work of short stories and creativity
The Water Museum, by Luis Alberto Urrea
Little Brown and Co, 2015, 272 pp., $13.51, ISBN: 978-0316334372
The Water Museum (Little Brown and Co), a new book by Luis Alberto Urrea, proves what many already know: Urrea is a master storyteller.
Fans of Urrea who may have enjoyed his highly successful books The Hummingbird’s Daughter and its follow up sequel Queen of America, will be thrilled to come into contact with this new book of short stories.
As most of his fans know, Urrea is a Mexican American author who was born in Tijuana, Mexico, of a Mexican father and an American mother. His family later moved to San Diego where Luis faced discrimination and racism from his classmates over his mixed background.
Urrea is now a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a mere stone’s throw from Pilsen, and lives in a suburb outside of Chicago.
In The Water Museum the author’s talent comes through in the book’s thirteen short stories. The stories here are nuanced, precise and a mastery of language.
The stories are also full of memorable, well-sketched characters, some of them Mexicans or Chicanos, who remain in your imagination after you have finished reading each short story.
In the short story called The National City Restoration Society two men, Chango and Junior, dream up a scheme to profit from the foreclosure crisis in San Diego. Renting a truck both characters haul away the left over furniture and plasma TV’s and other items left in abandoned homes which have been lost by their owners due to the mortgage crisis.
In the short story Mountains Without Number the authors draws a realistic picture of life in a small town in the Northwest. An aging female café owner reminisces about her past when she was young and attending high school. In a subplot to the story, Urrea weaves the tale of how succeeding high school graduates kept a yearly tradition of writing their graduation year on the peak of a high mountain. The suspense builds until the surprising ending, which I won’t give away.
In another masterful story called Chametla the author draws inspiration from his Mexican roots to tell a story of an injured Mexican soldier who has part of his jaw destroyed by a bullet. His friend carries him along trying to save his life but, in a tribute, I guess, to Gabriel García Márquez and magical surrealism, one night out of the dying soldier’s head float out all his memories and the wonderful people he met during his lifetime.
I could go on writing about the other ten wonderful short stories in The Water Museum, but I’d rather that each reader discovers Urrea for himself and reaches out for this wonderful book of short stories.
For those not familiar enough with Urrea, he is a dedicated lover of rock and roll music and throughout the book there are many references to rock songs and rock singers. The book is a tapestry of characters and actions carved out of Urrea’s imagination and a book that deserves high praise.
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Antonio Zavala is a freelance writer who lives in Chicago and writes about the people and neighborhoods of Chicago.
