By Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea must have been a tough kid. The child of an Anglo mother and Mexican father, he had to deal with the heavily multicultural atmosphere of San Diego, where he grew up; and the racial divide within his own family.

Fortunately, Urrea seems to have survived his childhood ÷ and kept a sense of humor about it. Cringe-inducing racist comments from his mother ÷ like her frequent use of the N-word and the justification, "We don't mean anything when we call them that honey, it's just their name," were probably bad enough.

Coupled with the many racist terms thrown his way by kids in the white neighborhood he eventually moved to, his childhood sounds almost unbearable. But in this, his third book in his "Border" trilogy, Urrea retells these stories with gentle humor.

The book is in seven distinct chapters that span his childhood to his adult life.

There's everything from an ode to Tucson environmentalist hero Edward Abbey to the time he got in trouble for using a figure of the Virgin Mary as a spaceship.

He frequently references his mixed ancestry ÷ not just his parents, but the generations of German, Irish and Spanish behind him. He also draws parallels between this and the mixed bag of American culture.

And the humor of "Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life" is such that the reader needn't be able to personally relate to the subject matter to enjoy it.

Perhaps that's why the novel is subtitled "Notes from an American Life."

It's Urrea's keen sense of his heritage outside of America's borders that let him tell these acutely American stories.