Book Review:
The Hummingbird’s Daughter

Author: Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.
Page Count: 528

By Lynne Bevan DeMichele

With guns aimed at her from all sides, a blonde, green-eyed teenage girl stands alone on a railroad flatcar; she holds out her hands and shouts “Kill no one!” On her way to her own execution that day, Teresa Urrea would, instead, find herself enshrined as the Saint of Cabora and is still venerated by thousands of México’s poorest people more than a century later.

Luis Urrea’s delicious and affecting account of her life, “The Hummingbird’s Daughter,” is part history, part fiction and culminates a lifelong fascination with his great aunt, Teresa Urrea. “Teresita,” as she is still known to her devotees, was abandoned as a toddler by her 14-year-old indigenous Yaqui mother among the dirt-floor peasant shacks near the grand hacienda of their patrón, Don Tomás Urrea.

One afternoon when she is still a little girl, Don Tomás literally recognizes her as his own daughter. She is bright, gentle and insatiably curious; the Don eagerly gives her an education and a father’s love. One of her most important tutors is an elderly housekeeper—one of Urrea’s most pungent characters—an irascible and wise old midwife named Huila who teaches Teresita how to use ancient healing herbs and the mysterious art of a curandera or healer. At the same time, Huila exposes her to some beliefs that run contrary to those of Mexico’s dominant religion, telling her that “Angels carry no harps. They have hammers,” and that “God is in every rock.” The girl’s astonishing gift for healing soon becomes apparent; she can soothe terrible pain with just a touch of her hands, a touch “like warm honey.”

Teresita grew up during the late 1800s when Mexican peasants were chaffing against the crushing dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. With revolution in the wind, news of thousands of desperate Indians flocking to the isolated Rancho Cabora in the border region burned the ears of Díaz and enraged leaders of the Catholic Church. This “most dangerous girl in México” not only healed the sick; she preached a kind of liberation theology that insisted on the rights and value of even the poorest peasant. But what made her most dangerous was the miracle of her astonishing resurrection on the day of her own funeral. She became the blessed “Santa de Cabora.”

Luis Urrea (pronounced “Oo-ray-ah”) is much celebrated as the writer of superb non-fiction about Mexico’s poor in books such as “By the Lake of Sleeping Children” and “The Devil’s Highway.” He approaches this historical novel with the meticulous eye of a reporter and the soul of a philosopher poet. I found the book to be unsentimental, yet profoundly moving and radiant with truth. Son of a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea’s cultural sensibilities are enlightened and poignant toward those on both sides of the border. And he has succeeded in bringing his ancestor, Teresa Urrea, back to life for contemporary readers in a way that will lodge her spirit in their hearts for a very long time.

Lynne Bevan DeMichele, a former communications director for the United Methodist Church in Indiana, is a freelance writer living in Gig Harbor, Wash.

This feature was developed by UMC.org, the official online ministry of the United Methodist Church.

Study Questions

• Re-read the quotes by Teresita Urrea and Lauro Aguirre in the first pages of the book. Why do you believe Luis Urrea placed them there?
• How did Don Tomás achieve an end to the hostilities between the Yaquis and the Mexican peasants? Would his technique work anywhere in today’s world?
• At one point in Huila’s teaching, she tells Teresita, “Faith, like Grace, is a gift, you see. It’s one of those riddles nobody can understand. . . .” Read the rest of the dialogue and talk about your own views of faith.
• In an especially lovely scene between Huila and Teresa, they discuss Huila’s impending death (begins on page 337). Here Teresita and Huila’s roles are reversed. Do you agree with Teresita’s views? How are they consistent or inconsistent with your own or with other Christians of today?
• Later, Teresita preaches that, “What our Father wants from us is our emotions, our feelings” (p. 356). What do you think she means by this, and how does this coincide with traditional church teaching? How does Teresita know what God wants of us, and do you believe her? How does Jesus answer the question of what God wants from us?
• Teresita tells the self-styled “Pope of México” that “those who presume to save, señor, win a cross” (p. 374). What does this mean, and do you agree?

Group Activities

• Listen to the music of “Calexico” or “Richard Hopkins and the Sidewinders” (www.sanjacintorecords.com). This is “border music” motivated by faith and recommended to readers by Luis Urrea in recent interviews. What messages does the music convey about faith and life on the border?
• Read aloud the dialogue between Teresita and Don Tomás that begins on page 394 after Tomás says, “I have something bothering me.” Discuss the significance of the roses as they relates to grace and holiness. Catholic hagiography is replete with stories of the scent of roses surrounding the bodies of true saints. The body of Teresita Urrea reportedly still rests uncorrupted in a crystal cave somewhere in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.
• Luis Urrea’s website contains his historical narrative of Teresita’s life, including events preceding her death at the age of 33. Read it online: www.luisurrea.com. What events in Teresita’s life did you find particularly compelling or intriguing and why?
• Discuss the concept of sainthood and miracles. What makes a saint? How does one become a saint? (You might want to do some research on the Catholic Church’s process of declaring a person a saint—beatification and canonization. (You can find information online such as www.catholic.org/saints/faq.php.). Do you agree with the declaration of Teresita’s sainthood by the villagers? Why or why not? 

Resources
Author's Web site
Publisher's Web site