Freshmen will find their way on The Devil’s Highway

Next year’s freshman class will get a copy of Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway in the mail this summer. The setting of the third UW Common Book is a searing stretch of desert straddling the Arizona-Mexico border.

This area, known as “the devil’s highway,” is a place so desolate that 14 of 26 Mexicans died attempting to illegally enter the United States in May 2001. Their journey, and the wider immigration debate, is at the heart of Urrea’s 220-page work of investigative journalism.

“He puts a lot of flesh on the skeleton of what we understand to be the border crossing,” said Lauro Flores, an American ethnic studies professor who interviewed Urrea in 2006 and also judged The Devil’s Highway in a book contest.

Urrea’s book was one of five finalists in the contest.

The Devil’s Highway investigates the case of the 26 Mexicans, but also delves into the world of border patrolmen and border-crossing guides known as coyotes.

“He tried to be fair in presenting both sides of the coin,” Flores said, referring to Urrea’s portrayal of border patrolmen.

The Common Book selection committee examines readability and content when determining which book they choose.

“If you open it up and you get to page 20, you’re going to get to page 40 and you’re going to get to page 60,” said Grant Kollet, director of first-year programs.

The Devil’s Highway is a book that will generate discussion among freshmen, said Kirsten Atik, a public information specialist with undergraduate academic affairs.

The book should spark dialogue between students because it focuses on migration, which is a global issue, rather than a Mexico-and-United States-border issue, Atik said.

Urrea, who grew up in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, said the border was also a broader concept.

“Growing up divided in half by a barbed wire fence has made me see the border everywhere I turn,” Urrea said in his interview with Flores. “There is a militarized border fence between male and female, between gay and straight, between right and left, between black and white, between brown and white, between brown and black. You get the idea. I don’t like fences. I do like bridges. So I’m not really a border writer. I’m a bridge builder.”

The objective of the Common Book is to connect incoming freshmen with their school and their peers. While students come from a variety of backgrounds and locales, the Common Book is the one unifying object all freshmen share, Kollet said.

Freshmen will receive the book this summer when they purchase the book in their mandatory new student enrollment and orientation fee.

Members of the selection committee are already thinking about their next pick. Although The Devil’s Highway and the two previous Common Books were nonfiction, the selection committee considers fiction, as well.

This year, Octavia Butler’s Kindred was almost chosen. Butler, who died in Seattle in 2006, wrote science fiction.

“I would love it if there was a novel in the mix,” Atik said. “I think it would be even better if there was a collection of poetry.”

The UW Common Book program was created in 2006. The first Common Book was Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder. Last year’s book was Field Notes from a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert. More than 2,000 people attended Kolbert’s campus appearance.

Administrators at the UW are in the process of arranging for Urrea to make an appearance on campus next year.