Rediscover Rudolfo Anaya: mythmaker, master storyteller, American
original
"The godfather and guru of Chicano literature." --Tony Hillerman
A writer powerfully attuned to the land and history of his native New
Mexico, Rudolfo Anaya (1937-2020) is one of the giants of Latino
literature. Over the course of a remarkable and acclaimed literary
career, Anaya redefined the American experience for generations of
readers.
Anaya broke new ground with his 1972 novel Bless Me, Ultima, a
mythic work that captures the richness and complexity of history,
community, and place in the American Southwest. Set just after World War
II, Bless Me, Ultima revolves around the young boy Antonio and his
quest to understand his identity and the demands of his future. Although
his mother's heart is set on his entering the priesthood, Antonio is
drawn to the charismatic Ultima, an elderly curandera or healer who
embodies the ancient wisdom of the pre-Columbian past.
The 1979 novel Tortuga draws on Anaya's experience of suffering
and recuperation after a diving accident as a teenager. Its hero,
nicknamed "Tortuga" because his body cast encases him like a turtle's
shell, grapples with the realities of bodily pain as he discovers that
true healing is spiritual as well as physical. The story reverberates
with local folklore about a mountain, also called Tortuga, home to a
sleeping spirit who will one day awaken and journey onward to the sea.
Weaving these threads together, Anaya creates, in the words of editor
Luis Alberto Urrea, "a tapestry inside of which he was encoding an
entire history of our very souls."
In the 1992 novel Alburquerque (restoring the "r" to the city's
original name), a young Mexican American boxing champion discovers that
his white biological mother had given him up for adoption at birth, and
he must now reevaluate everything he thought he was. The winner of a PEN
West Fiction Award, the novel brims with emotionally powerful
characterizations, political commentary, humor, and lyrical writing that
reveals Anaya to be, once again, an indispensable American fabulist.
