Talking with Rudy: Platicando con Rudolfo Anaya

by Irene Blea

In this unusual, magical realistic memoir, Dr. Irene I. Blea shares frequent conversations with award-winning author, Rudolfo Anaya, who died in 2020. They were friends for over forty years, shared working on the University of New Mexico campus, and lived near one another. Anaya is best known for his book, Bless Me, Ultima . In this volume, Dr. Blea recalls platicas, conversations, with her friend, Rudy, about the essence of his writing, growing up in New Mexico, the nature of university life, the art and business of writing, publishing, death, dying, and spirituality. Blea, also an award-winning author and a sociologist, draws from their shared community understanding, and her ability to write in a multidisciplinary manner to poetically close the gap between literature and social science to render us an opportunity to say good-bye to Rudolfo Anaya, the godfather of Chicano literature.

198 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 15, 2025

About the author

Irene Blea is a New Mexico native who earned her Ph. D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Before her retirement from California State University-Los Angeles, she was an accomplished author of several textbooks, poetry, academic and popular articles. Blea retired as a Tenured, Full Professor and Chairperson of Mexican American Studies. Two of her 7 textbooks, Toward a Chicano Social Science (Praeger, 1981), and La Chicana and the Intersection of Race, Class and Gender (Greenwood, 1983), are classics in her field. Blea has written and published one play and much poetry. After her retirement she published family fiction and memoir. Suzanna is the title of Blea’s first novel in a trilogy about a thirteen-year-old girl married off to a thirty-two-year-old man in 1920’s New Mexico. The second novel, Poor People’s Flowers, continues Suzanna’s story upon arrival in Colorado. The third, Beneath the Super Moon, Suzanna is set free to live life freely after a life predetermined by others. This transformation occurs during the lunar eclipse. Suzanna still strives to reunite with her children, but not before she confronts the darkness and the sorrow of her past. Dr. Blea is an award-winning academic and a New Mexico Humanities Council Scholar.