Luis Alberto Urrea Interview

In February of 2004, I interviewed celebrated author Luis Alberto Urrea at his home about a variety of topics pertaining to his books, his experiences growing up in Tijuana, and his views on the current political and human situation on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Urrea is a powerful and talented writer, and also a passionate defender of human rights. His books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have all won prestigious awards and honors, including the American Book Award, Foreward Magazine Book of the Year Award, the New York Times Notable Book Award, inclusion in the Best American Poetry collection, and inclusion on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List.

By the end of our chat, we had logged almost an hour and a half -- and over 10,000 words -- of interview time.

Roughly one-fifth of the content of this interview appears in the latest issue of Punk Planet magazine(Issue #63), available now in independent book stores(as well as Borders Books and Barnes & Noble)and online through Interpunk.com.

My plans for the complete interview are to include it in a compendium of interviews I am putting together for a book on the relationship between the arts and socio-political change.

**NOTE - in the printed version of the interview that appears in Punk Planet, the city of Tijuana is misspelled as "Tiajuana." My original draft of the interview had the proper spelling, but was later "corrected" by one of the editors of the magazine before going into the final edition.

One Italian Class? Make That Two!

As it turns out, enrollment in Italian 101 is higher than expected for the Fall Semester at Purdue University. High enough, in fact, that they are adding an extra division of the class.

As this will be my first semester teaching, I was a bit nervous about taking on two classes at once. However, as the second class will simply be adding on a second division of the same class, the preparation work will be the same for both classes. That means I get "two takes" to teach it right, in studio parlance!

Here is a link to the Course Description from the Purdue University site. From that page, there is a link to class schedules. As my course is the introductory course to Italian, there is no prerequisite course requirement, and no prior experience in Italian is necessary. Of the five divisions of Italian 101 being offered, I will be teaching Divisions 01 and 02. Any Lafayette-based people interested in taking the course can feel free to e-mail me at massg@aol.com.