Who is anaya in bless me ultima

New Mexico. Bless Me, Ultima is Rudolfo Anaya's first novel, written around and published in The novel opens as the protagonist, Antonio, approaches the age of seven when his family decides to house Ultima, an elderly curandera. Following an immediate bond with Ultima, Antonio learns of the many herbs and barks, which she uses in her ceremonies.

Tony's progress in learning about life is grounded in Ultima, who is highly respected by his parents. However, one night Antonio witnesses the death of a man back from the war, which makes him question his religion and identity, and sparks his journey towards manhood.

At the conclusion of the novel, Antonio reflects on the tension that he feels as he is pulled between his father's free, open landscape of the llano, and his mother's circumscribed river valley of the town. 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 , a group of Chicano publishers accepted his book.

The novel is also semiautobiographical. In his teens, Anaya suffered a serious swimming injury that left him temporarily paralyzed. 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. His interest in literature remained strong, however, and he eventually returned to the University of New Mexico for further study. In , he received a Master of Arts degree in literature, and he returned later and earned another Master of Arts degree, this one in guidance and counseling.

Between and , he served as the Director of Counseling at the University of Albuquerque. Although Bless Me, Ultima was Anaya's first published novel and the one that gained him international acclaim as a writer, it was not his first novel. His previously written novels did not see print. During the mids, he wrote prodigiously, expressing his life and his experiences through poetry, short stories, and novels. For Anaya, writing became an expression of freedom.

Seeing his people around him "in chains," he revolted against that world. Breaking those chains was important; his characters would not be enslaved. He realized that if he could write about his experiences and his family, using the town where he grew up as a setting, he could focus on these early years and create a sense of being liberated. While doing so, he would also come to know himself better and better understand the forces that shaped him as a person yearning to write and yearning to be free.

Using his childhood as the subject matter for a novel, Anaya put together a world filled with ideas and activity. Bless Me, Ultima, then, is a work that examines the various forces that shape the life of Antonio, a young Mexican-American boy who is a main character in the novel.