Rudolfo Anaya: Bless Me, Ultima, Tortuga, Alburquerque (LOA #361)

Library of America presents a definitive collection of the founder of modern Chicano literature Mythmaker, master storyteller, and a writer powerfully attuned to the land and history of his native New Mexico, Rudolfo Anaya is one of the undisputed fathers of Chicano literature. Writing in an era when Latino voices were marginalized and just beginning to be read and acknowledged, Anaya broke new ground with Bless Me, Ultima (1972), a mythic novel that captures the richness and complexity of history, community, and place in the American Southwest. Set just after World War II in eastern New Mexico, Bless Me, Ultima revolves around the young boy Antonio and his quest to understand his identity and the prospects for his future. Although his mother imagines that we will become a Catholic priest, Antonio is drawn to the charismatic Ultima, an elderly curandera or healer who embodies wisdom stretching back to the pre-Columbian past and is linked to the primal forces of nature. Two later novels show his continued sensitivity to the subtleties of identity and the pull of the Rio Grande Valley on its people and communities. Tortuga (1979), drawing on his own experience of suffering and recuperation after a diving accident as a teenager, is set in a rehabilitation center for disabled children. The story of young Salomon, called “Tortuga” because his body cast encases him like a turtle’s shell, explores the realities of bodily pain and the obligations we owe to one another. And in the 1992 novel Alburquerque (restoring the original “r” that was removed from the city’s name), a young boxing champion discovers that his white biological mother had given him up for adoption at birth, spurring him to reevaluate everything he had thought himself to be. Characteristically fusing emotionally powerful characterizations, political commentary, humor, and lyrical writing, Anaya reveals himself to be an indispensable American fabulist.