In 1974 I began teaching at the University of New Mexico. I kept writing, completing my somewhat autobiographical New Mexico trilogy with Heart of Aztlan and Tortuga. Heart of Aztlan is set in the 1950s in Barelas, a barrio in Alburquerque. My parents had moved us to the city, following the pattern after World War II which drew many families from small New Mexican communities to seek work in bigger cities. Tortuga is a novel that verges on magical realism in which the hospital becomes the underworld that the boy, Tortuga, must struggle to leave.
But Bless Me, Ultima remains the favorite. I believe readers have sympathy for Antonio’s spiritual journey. Perhaps, like Antonio, we have questioned our faith or beliefs, and we understand his search for the truth. The novel also explores folklore, myth, and dream in a lyrical narrative. Readers tell me they feel the landscape come alive in the novel, the river palpitates with its presence, its soul, and the llano seems to form the character of the people who live there. The sun and moon, the river and the open plain, the themes of good and evil, the teaching of the Catholic church and the native spirituality, all these elements form archetypes that touch the reader.
The beliefs of my traditional New Mexican culture are grounded in the Catholic religion and Spanish folktales from the Iberian world. These beliefs are influenced by cultural borrowings from the Pueblo Indian way of life. This culture is the backdrop for the novel. It is the way of life of the Nuevos Mexicanos that inspires my creativity. But a novel is not written to explain a culture, it creates its own. I create stories, so the reader must separate realistic portrayals of the culture from fiction.
I am still writing. My recent novels include a quartet written around the seasons and set in Alburquerque, where I live. The quartet started with the spring novel, Alburquerque, then shifted to three murder mysteries: Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, and Shaman Winter. The novels are set in the city and deal with more contemporary themes, yet they echo the same spiritual themes I explored in Bless Me, Ultima. I have also written dozens of short stories and essays, many plays, and recently picture books and stories for young readers.
The success of Bless Me, Ultima is due to its readers. One reader tells another about it, or a teacher uses it with students. I’m especially pleased when young readers read and discuss my work. Antonio’s story has attracted readers from all over the world. It has been widely translated into many languages. I am still amazed, and thankful, the novel has this power to touch the lives of people, and perhaps like Ultima, help in the healing process that we all need in our daily lives.
Rudolfo Anaya
Alburquerque, New Mexico
Uno
Ultima came to stay with us the summer I was almost seven. When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood. She took my hand, and the silent, magic powers she possessed made beauty from the raw, sun-baked llano, the green river valley, and the blue bowl which was the white sun’s home. My bare feet felt the throbbing earth and my body trembled with excitement. Time stood still, and it shared with me all that had been, and all that was to come….
Let me begin at the beginning. I do not mean the beginning that was in my dreams and the stories they whispered to me about my birth, and the people of my father and mother, and my three brothers—but the beginning that came with Ultima.
The attic of our home was partitioned into two small rooms. My sisters, Deborah and Theresa, slept in one and I slept in the small cubicle by the door. The wooden steps creaked down into a small hallway that led into the kitchen. From the top of the stairs I had a vantage point into the heart of our home, my mother’s kitchen. From there I was to see the terrified face of Chávez when he brought the terrible news of the murder of the sheriff; I was to see the rebellion of my brothers against my father; and many times late at night I was to see Ultima returning from the llano where she gathered the herbs that can be harvested only in the light of the full moon by the careful hands of a curandera.
That night I lay very quietly in my bed, and I heard my father and mother speak of Ultima.
“Está sola,” my father said, “ya no queda gente en el pueblito de Las Pasturas—”
He spoke in Spanish, and the village he mentioned was his home. My father had been a vaquero all his life, a calling as ancient as the coming of the Spaniard to Nuevo Méjico. Even after the big rancheros and the tejanos came and fenced the beautiful llano, he and those like him continued to work there, I guess because only in that wide expanse of land and sky could they feel the freedom their spirits needed.