Rudolfo Anaya was born on
October 30, 1937,
in Pastura, New Mexico, the fifth of seven children. Anaya also
had three half-siblings from his parents’ previous marriages. When
Anaya was still very young, his family moved to Santa Rosa, New
Mexico. When he was a teenager, his family moved again, this time
to Albuquerque, where Anaya graduated from high school in 1956.
He attended business school for two years and dropped out before
finishing, but he graduated from the University of New Mexico a
few years later. Anaya worked as a public school teacher in Albuquerque
from 1963 to 1970.
During that period, he married Patricia Lawless. Afterward, he worked
as the director of counseling for the University of Albuquerque
for two years before accepting a position as an associate professor
at the University of New Mexico.
When Anaya was a freshman in college, he began writing
poetry and novels. His wife encouraged him to pursue his literary
endeavors, and over a period of seven years, he completed his first
and best-known novel, Bless Me, Ultima. East Coast
publishing houses rejected the novel repeatedly. Finally, in 1972,
a group of Chicano publishers accepted his book. Bless Me,
Ultima went on to win the prestigious Premio Quinto Sol
award and is now considered a classic Chicano work.
Bless Me, Ultima is the story of a young
boy’s coming-of-age within a cultural tapestry that includes Spanish,
Mexican, and Native American influences, and in which many of the
major cultural forces conflict with one another. The young boy,
Antonio Márez, must navigate a number of conflicts—between farmers
and cowboys, Spanish and indigenous peoples, and English-speaking and
Spanish-speaking peoples—that collectively structured the cultural
life in rural New Mexico during the 1940s.
The novel is also semiautobiographical. Like Antonio’s parents,
Anaya’s mother was the daughter of farmers and his father was a
vaquero, or cowboy. In his teens, Anaya suffered a serious swimming
injury that left him temporarily paralyzed. This incident
appears in Bless Me, Ultima when Florence, Antonio’s
friend, dies in a swimming accident. Like Antonio’s family, Anaya’s
family respected the art of curanderismo, or folk medicine, which
Ultima practices throughout the book. Anaya and his siblings moved
between the Spanish- and English-speaking worlds, and they were
raised in a devoutly Catholic home, like the Márez children were.
And like Antonio’s brothers, Anaya’s brothers were fighting in World
War II during most of his early childhood.
Anaya has become a prominent Chicano intellectual and
writer since the publication of Bless Me, Ultima.
He has given lectures at many colleges and has won several literary
awards for his work. Over the years, he has demonstrated a strong
commitment to helping new Chicano writers through the difficult
and sometimes daunting process of getting their voices heard.
