The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea (New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2005)
"Teresa Urrea was a real person," Luis Alberto Urrea explains in his author's note at the conclusion of The Hummingbird's Daughter. It took Urrea "more than twenty years of fieldwork, research, travel, and interviews to compose" a fictional account of her life. The hummingbird's daughter is Teresita, the illegitimate daughter of a landowner, Tómas Urrea, and Cayetana Chávez, one of his workers. Readers follow Teresita from birth to adulthood, from a worker's shack to life in her father's home, from beatings to sainthood, through peaceful years and revolution, death and resurrection. Teresita reflects the heart and soul of Mexico, a voice for the People.
The Hummingbird's Daughter's length gives readers time to get to know Teresita, the memorable Huila, Tómas, Loreto, Gabriela, Don Lauro Aguirre, Segundo, Buenaventura, Cruz Chávez, and many other characters, including the pilgrims who gather at the Urrea ranch waiting to be healed by Teresita.
The miracles, mysticism, joy, pain, suffering, faith, and destiny in The Hummingbird's Daughter take place in the landscape of Mexico. Forced from their home, the Urrea family and the People, the workers, of the ranch, move north to Sonora, following a difficult trail to another Urrea holding "in a wide valley that opened onto a plain that stretched as far as any one of them could see. The patchwork of tilled fields and cattle pasture gave way to desert tans and yellows. Mountains to the east, hills to the west and north. Green creek beds crisscrossed the terrain...." The Hummingbird's Daughter tells Teresita's story, but the book also belongs to Sinaloa, Sonora, and Chihuahua, their geography and history.
Websites
Luis Alberto Urrea urges readers to visit his website for more information on Teresita and The Hummingbird's Daughter.
Only rich men, soldiers, and a few Indians had wandered far enough from home to learn the terrible truth: Mexico was too big. It had too many colors. It was noisier than anyone could have imagined, and the voice of the Atlantic was different from the voice of the Pacific. One was shrill, worried, and demanding. The other was boisterous, easy to rile into a frenzy. The rich men, soldiers, and Indians were the few who knew that the east was a swoon of green, a thick-aired smell of ripe fruit and flowers and dead pigs and salt and sweat and mud, while the west was a riot of purple. Pyramids rose between llanos of dust and among turgid jungles. Snakes as long as country roads swam tame beside canoes. Volcanoes wore hats of snow. Cactus forests grew taller than trees. Shamans ate mushrooms and flew. In the south, some tribes still went naked, their women wearing red flowers in their hair and blue skirts, and their breasts hanging free. Men outside the great Mexico City ate tacos made of live winged ants that flew away if the men did not chew quickly enough. -- from The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea
"Feel the earth, keep the integrity of the heart. Keep the spine in line. Let your heart shine. Relax, don't strain. The white man always has to strain. Has to flex his muscles. Be soft. Be like water. Water is soft, and it is the most powerful force on earth." -- from The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea
