Highway

In 1942, fifteen thousand American soldiers and civilian laborers poured into Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon to construct a highway stretching from mainland United States to Alaska overcoming obstacles of climate, terrain, and manpower shortages (see Figure 1). The construction of the Alaska Highway serves an illustrative episode where Canadian and American interest in northern development and continental defense became intertwined. There has been a tendency in the historiography to…

Humanities course has read three books, in three different genres over the span of the semester; ranging from Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, being the nature writing, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, the fiction, and Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway, which is a creative non-fiction. Each author made a specific contribution to the class themes and the Southwest Humanities. During the semester, the non-fiction books have brought the most to the table. Though the fiction stories gave us a…

Title: The title The Devil’s Highway is both literal and metaphorical. Because the meaning of the title has both literal and metaphorical connotations, it easily captures the essence of the book. Literally, while these men travelled across the desert in order to reach the Mexican-US border, they traveled through the Devil’s Highway. Metaphorically, the title is a representation of how these men went through Hell on earth to get to where they needed to go. These men experienced dehydration,…

to grow old. “Life is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts is one of these songs; not only is it a fun one to sing along to, but simply listening to the guitar solos or drums puts one up to speed to get off their seat and move with the beat. This piece made a great impact on me during a crucial and exciting time in my life as well as was able to grab my attention consistently while displaying and explaining a stronger, deeper meaning of life through its lyrics. “Life is a Highway” is a well-known song…

I chose to read “The Devil’s Highway” by Luis Alberto Urrea. It is a nonfiction account of the journey of the “Yuma 14”, a group of twenty-six men who were led by a Mexican coyotes across the border into the United States through a mountainous and deadly Arizona desert. I chose this specific title because illegal immigration is a hot political topic, especially in my home state of Texas, and I wanted to learn more about it. This is a story about a group of Mexican men desperate and willing to…

In the novel The Devil’s Highway, author Luis Alberto Urrea describes the seemingly impassable struggles immigrants must overcome when travelling from Mexico to the United States. The story follows the deadly journey of a group of undocumented male immigrants who in 2001 attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona through a desolate area known as the Devil’s Highway. Urrea provides the reader with not only a compelling story but also a complex historical compilation…

The novel I read was The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea. The Devil’s Highway is a true story about Mexican immigration to the United States. It retells the devastating journey of the group of men who attempted to cross the U.S. border by entering one of the deadliest regions in Arizona known as the Devil’s Highway. There were twenty-six men who entered the region, and only twelve survived. This journey was the largest number of border-event deaths in history. Urrea introduces each…

In the book, The Devil’s Highway, the author, Luis Alberto Urrea truly captures the emotions of the reader. In the initial chapters on the book, I was confused. I felt as if there was a hidden purpose in the writing. I felt like I was being swayed to believe in the cause of one type of people versus another. By the middle of the book I realized that this book was an honest recollection of events by all parties involved. I felt as if I was part of the situation. I felt as if I was enduring the…

Powwow Highway Task Sheet 1. How does Powwow Highway depict the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana? The reservation is depicted in a way which clearly shows that the people there are living below the average. Most of the houses have no windows, pylons are rare and the whole reservation looks empty. The only place where we can see some community life is the pub and the community room, where an IBA agent tried to convince the tribe to sell their lands. 2. Later the characters…

The book, The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea, is based on the true story of the Yuma-14, or Wellstone 26, who were Mexicans that crossed into America through the desert. This novel goes through not only their story but what happened before and after their journey, as well as the mentalities of the Border Patrol agents. It gives you the complete picture of what had happened. The Devil’s Highway starts off with a brief background about what happened. It’s learned here that 14 men had died…