Description
Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima enters his life. She is a curandera, one who heals with herbs and magic. 'We cannot let her live her last days in loneliness,' says Antonio's mother. 'It is not the way of our people,' agrees his father. And so Ultima comes to live with Antonio's family in New Mexico. Soon Tony will journey to the threshold of manhood. Always, Ultima watches over him. She graces him with the courage to face childhood bigotry, diabolical possession, the moral collapse of his brother, and too many violent deaths. Under her wise guidance, Tony will probe the family ties that bind him, and he will find in himself the magical secrets of the pagan pastโa mythic legacy equally as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America in which he has been schooled. At each turn in his life there is Ultima who will nurture the birth of his soul.
Rudolfo A. Anaya is the winner of the $1,000 Second Annual PREMIO QUINTO SOL national Chicano literary award. Mr. Anaya was born in New Mexico.
As he has written in his 1985 autobiography, "You were born with your umbilical cord tied around your neck,' my mother was to say many years later. 'La Grande was there to help with your La Grande, of course, was Ultima, the principal Rudolfo A. Anaya character in the novel, BLESS ME, ULTIMA. "La Grande.
That name haunted my childhood. She was a woman of power, a power born of understanding. An intelligent wom- an who knew the harmony in nature . . .
Anaya attended public schools in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and he was graduated from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.
About his chosen trade as author, he has confessed that, "My discipline as a writer evolved from early self-training. I would write every morning, and I still do. Writing is never quite learned. I have to rewrite and rewrite each manuscript before I'm satisfied. All in all, my writing is self-taught."
