The Big Read 2008

In conjunction with The Big Read initiative, St. Cloud State librarians have put together a display in the Miller Center lobby and a collection of resources about featured author, Rodolfo Anaya, whose novel, Bless Me, Ultima was chosen for the St. Cloud 2008 Big Read.

About The Big Read Big Read 2008
Biography of Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya
Partial list of Anaya's works

Novels
Short story collections
Children’s books
Non-Fiction

Selected literary criticism

About The Big Read

The National Endowment for the Arts, in collaboration with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest, presents the 2008 celebration of The Big Read, a national initiative whose purpose is to highlight and promote the place of reading in American life and culture. Since 2006, communities across the country have participated in The Big Read, with each community choosing a book for its members to read, share and discuss, all with the aim of encouraging reading for enjoyment and enlightenment.

Rodolfo Anaya’s classic American novel, Bless Me, Ultima, was chosen for the St. Cloud 2008 Big Read. This story of a young man’s coming of age in New Mexico in the 1940s and his struggle to reach understanding and maturity was chosen for its relevance and appeal to the rapidly expanding Latino population of central Minnesota. It is expected that the choice of Bless Me, Ultima for the St. Cloud will give the St. Cloud community a new perspective of Mexican-American lives and culture, as well as afford everyone the opportunity to explore and enjoy a classic of American literature. In partnership with the Great River Regional Library System, over twenty departments at St. Cloud State University will host a variety of community events involving children, youth, and adults.

For more about The Big Read, please visit the NEA’s Web site: http://www.neabigread.org

Biography of Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya

The author of Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya, is one of this country’s best-known and certainly most beloved Chicano writers, and is widely regarded as the father of modern Chicano literature. A lifelong resident of New Mexico, Anaya was born in the tiny east central village of Pastura on October 30, 1937. He was the fifth of seven children born to Martin and Rafaelita Anaya, who had three additional children between them from previous marriages. His family moved to Santa Rosa, New Mexico, another small town, shortly after his birth, and it was in Santa Rosa where Anaya would spend his formative years, in the heart of a rural, overwhelmingly Latino and devoutly Catholic community. When he was a teenager, his family moved again, this time to Albuquerque, where Anaya graduated from high school in 1956.

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Anaya: Bless Me, Ultima is autobiographical in the sense that I use my hometown, the Pecos River, Highway 66, the church, the school, the little villages and ranches around the town. My parents were very much like Antonio's parents. My mother grew up in a farming family in Porta de Luna. My father grew up on the llano as a vaquero, as a cowboy. [1]

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Anaya began his writing career while a freshman at the University of New Mexico (UNM), where he wrote several novels and short stories. He graduated from UNM in 1963, and went on to earn master’s degrees in English (1968) and Counseling (1972), also from UNM. Anaya taught in the Albuquerque public school system from 1963 to 1970, leaving to become the Director of Counseling for the University of Albuquerque. In 1974, he accepted an appointment as assistant professor of English at the University of New Mexico, where he continues to teach today as Professor Emeritus, a status he attained in 1993.

In 1966, Anaya married his wife, Patricia Lawless, who was instrumental in encouraging him to continue writing and supported his creative endeavors from the beginning. Consequently, over a period of several years (1959-1966), he completed his first and best-known novel, Bless Me, Ultima.

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Anaya: I've always used the technique of the cuento [story or folktale]. I am an oral storyteller, but now I do it on the printed page. I think if we were very wise we would use that same tradition in video cassettes, in movies, and on radio. [2]

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Bless Me, Ultima, was repeatedly rejected by large, established publishing houses, whose editors were put off by the large swatches of Spanish dialogue and by Anaya’s descriptions of decidedly non-Anglo lives and culture. It was finally accepted for publication in 1972, several years after Anaya had completed it. The publisher was Quinto Sol, a small press based in Berkeley, California, dedicated to publishing literature by emerging Chicano writers. Bless Me, Ultima went on to win the Premio Quinto Sol award and is now considered a major classic of Chicano literature, used in many undergraduate Chicano studies and literature courses in colleges and universities around the country.

Since the publication of Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya has written novels, plays, poetry and a number of children’s books. All of Anaya’s work is imbued with his upbringing, his childhood and the history of his family. Above all, it is saturated with a sense of place: the llanos, farms and tiny towns of the southwestern United States. His work illustrates both the joy and the tension inherent in holding disparate cultures – the Mexican, the Indigenous and the Anglo – in one’s heart, and the constant struggle of Mexican-Americans to resolve that tension and integrate aspects of all cultures into a single coherent and cohesive world view. Many of his works are written in English and Spanish, both languages reflecting the regional slang of the southwestern United States. His work is filled with the legends and folklore of the indigenous peoples of the Southwest, reflected through Mexican-American experience. The clash of cultures, languages and peoples of New Mexico gave Anaya the opportunity to apply his genius to the forging of a unique sensibility that enriches the American spirit.

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Anaya: I write because I must. Then the whole idea of community comes into mind. Yes, I write for my New Mexican community, the Spanish-speaking world, but also for the entire world. Sometimes I'll be writing and I'll think of a person, a family member, or sometimes of a critic, and I'll say, “This is for them.” [3]

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Anaya: The bottom line is our students need to know the variety of communities in our country and in the world. We're not creating a multicultural country, it's already here! We can't hide our heads in the sand. Let's prepare our children for the wonderful variety that is life. [4]

Sources:

[1], [3] National Endowment for the Arts. (2008). The Big Read: About the author: Rudolfo Anaya.

[2] National Endowment for the Humanities. (1999). Writing the Southwest: Rudolfo Anaya.

Gale Cengage Learning. (2004). Hispanic Heritage: Rudolfo Anaya.

[4] National Education Association. Author Rudolfo Anaya seeks to raise self-esteem of young readers.

Rudolfo Anaya. (1981). Contemporary Authors-New Revision, vol. 124, 35-42.

Rudolfo A. Anaya. (1989). Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 82: Chicano Writers. 24-35.
SCSU Library, Reference Collection: PN 451 .D54 v. 82x

Partial list of works

Novels:

Bless Me, Ultima. Quinto Sol/Tonatiuh International, 1972.

Heart of Aztlan. Editorial Justa, 1976.

Tortuga. Editorial Justa, 1979.