On the Southwestern writer whose debut novel redefined American literature—and
was just the beginning.
One of the questions that have most consistently driven my work on this
blog has been why we remember the things we do, why we forget others, and,
perhaps most especially, how we can challenge those narratives and add much
more into our collective memories and conversations. While I have certainly often
focused on darker
and more difficult such additions, I hope that the scales have been
balanced by the many inspiring and compelling moments, figures, and works I have
likewise sought to highlight (many of them, of course, arising
directly out of the darker histories). Mary Hunter Austin, the focus of Monday’s
post, is one exemplary Southwestern such figure; New Mexico-born Mexican
American novelist and professor Rudolfo Anaya is most
definitely another.
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Anaya’s debut novel, Bless Me, Ultima
(1972) fundamentally shifted the American literary and cultural landscape (and continues to!). Anaya’s book was far from
the first Chicano American text, far from the first to include both Spanish and
English, far from the first to focus on Mexican American lives in the Southwest—those
honors go to authors from a century prior to Anaya’s debut, writers such as Maria
Amparo Ruiz de Burton and Maria Cristina Mena.
But like contemporary Native American authors N. Scott Momaday and Leslie
Marmon Silko, Anaya brought his literary and cultural heritage to a new
prominence and visibility, helping originate a late 20th century
Chicano literary boom that would come to include Gloria
Anzaldúa, Sandra
Cisneros, and many more. Moreover, like Cisneros’ House on Mango Street, Anaya’s novel deals both with local and
cultural contexts and with universal experiences and themes, making it as
accessible as it is challenging, as engaging as it is controversial. It’s just
a great American novel, and deserves a much wider readership.
But it’s not like Anaya has just sat around waiting for that response. In the four
decades since he published Ultima,
he has published more than a dozen other works of fiction, ten collections of
writing for children, numerous anthologies and collections (of his own work and
other Chicano American writing), and five plays, all while teaching at the University of New
Mexico and serving as a
mentor for many younger writers. One of those children’s works, My
Land Sings: Stories from the Rio Grande (1999), perfectly illustrates
just how much Anaya’s work has always been and remains connected to, influenced
by, and contributing to the culture and identity of the American Southwest. He
has blessed the region many times over, and we’re all blessed to have his voice
and works to help embody and carry forward all that the Southwest is and means.
Last Southwest
story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Southwest stories or histories you’d highlight?
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