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by Rudolfo Anaya
Although only six years old, Antonio Marez is perceptive beyond his years.
He was brought into the world with the help of Ultima, a curandera, or folk healer, in touch with nature and the spirit world. Revered by some as a wisewoman but rebuked by others as a witch, Ultima has now come back to stay with Tony's family in New Mexico. As Tony seeks out his destiny—torn between his mother's farming forebears and his father's wandering vaquero roots, between Spanish Catholicism and the gods of his indigenous ancestors—Ultima's loving tutelage will help him navigate questions of life and death, good and evil, and reveal to him the vastness of the heritage that shapes him, in this pioneering work of literature.
"One of the foundational texts of Chicano literature." —Los Angeles Review of Books
"Anaya's voice [is] rich as mahogany, terse as a stream." —The New York Times
This information about Bless Me, Ultima (Penguin Vitae) was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rudolfo Anaya (1937-2020) was a New Mexican novelist and essayist, and one of the founding voices in modern Chicanx literature. A professor at the University of New Mexico and a lifelong champion of Chicanx voices who devoted himself to supporting aspiring writers, he received many literary awards, including the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, the Premio Quinto Sol National Chicano literary award, the Notable New Mexican Award, and the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction. His debut novel, Bless Me, Ultima, was named a Great American Read by PBS, and has been adapted into a feature film, an opera, and several stage plays.
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