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Rudolfo Anaya: Bless Me, Ultima; Tortuga; Alburquerque (LOA #361)
Rediscover Rudolfo 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.
“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.
- GenresFictionLiterature
768 pages, Hardcover
Published September 13, 2022
4 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Rudolfo Anaya
88 books472 followersRudolfo Anaya lives and breathes the landscape of the Southwest. It is a powerful force, full of magic and myth, integral to his writings. Anaya, however, is a native Hispanic fascinated by cultural crossings unique to the Southwest, a combination of oldSpain and New Spain, of Mexico with Mesoamerica and the anglicizing forces of the twentieth century. Rudolfo Anaya is widely acclaimed as the founder of modern Chicano literature. According to the New York Times, he is the most widely read author in Hispanic communities, and sales of his classic Bless Me, Ultima (1972) have surpassed 360,000, despite the fact that none of his books have been published originally by New York publishing houses. His works are standard texts in Chicano studies and literature courses around the world, and he has done more than perhaps any other single person to promote publication of books by Hispanic authors in this country. With the publication of his novel, Albuquerque (1992),Newsweek has proclaimed him a front-runner in "what is better called not the new multicultural writing, but the new American writing." His most recent volume, published in 1995, is Zia Summer.
"I've always used the technique of the cuento. I am an oral storyteller, but now I do it on the printed page. I think if we were very wise we would use that same tradition in video cassettes, in movies, and on radio."
from
http://www.unm.edu/~wrtgsw/anaya.html
and
http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_reso...
"I've always used the technique of the cuento. I am an oral storyteller, but now I do it on the printed page. I think if we were very wise we would use that same tradition in video cassettes, in movies, and on radio."
from
http://www.unm.edu/~wrtgsw/anaya.html
and
http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_reso...
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