Thursday, October 23, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

'I just wanted to tell a story'

Rudolfo Anaya on the birth of Chicano literature

By John Ziebell

Autumn has come to New Mexico, and if you want to find award-winning novelist Rudolfo Anaya at this time of year--a man for whom place is not only where we live but who we are--check his garden.

"Right now," he says, "the weather's perfect here."

But you get the sense that, for Anaya, the neighborhood might always be perfect. He can still drive to Pastura, the small town where he was born, in an afternoon. Memories of that town and his childhood were the basis for his first novel, Bless Me, Ultima; the fact that it's still rolling off the bookstore shelves after more than 30 years speaks to the author's success.

"Basically, I wasn't planning any big message for the world," Anaya says in retrospect. "I just wanted to tell a story about the town where I grew up, and some of the characters there. Maybe that's when stories work best."

That certainly holds true for Anaya, who went on to win the prestigious Premio Quinto Sol Award, the City of Los Angeles Award for Literature, the New Mexico Governor's Award, the Mexican Medal of Friendship and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Fellowship. Anaya won the PEN Center West Award for Fiction for his novel Alburquerque (and that is the correct spelling; in his title the author restored the original New Mexican version of the city's name). Most recently, he was awarded a National Medal for the Arts by George Bush.

"Somebody called me the godfather of Chicano literature," Anaya says. "I don't know, that feels like a lot of responsibility."

But the fact remains that Bless Me, Ultima--the story of a young New Mexican boy who carves his own spiritual territory out of the competing religious and cultural influences that surround him--was published early in what became an important literary movement, although that was never what Anaya had in mind.

"When you're young, writing comes out of guts and heart. You're not trying to come up with any global perspective," Anaya says. "Every writer needs to find his or her own voice, and that's what I did."

A large part of that voice is invested in individual experience. Home, family, friends, folklore--the essence of who we are, and what we write, is found there. Which is why the spirituality that plays so significant role in Anaya's work has such an organic feel.

"The kind of Catholic upbringing I had is very special. You're close to the church, but it's more than that. You've got a real idea of maybe what saints are all about," Anaya says. "I found a very strong sense of that among the Pueblo tribes along the Rio Grande here in New Mexico as well--a history of paying attention to the spiritual life. And there's certainly something to be said for a history that's been in place for as long as theirs has."

Who we are is also affected by another important tool that Anaya sees as slipping from our cultural grasp: the art of storytelling.

"Oral history still existed when I was growing up. It was around for 400 years before that and I see myself as heir to the tradition. Storytelling is very special--it's who we are. That's how the Pueblo people hand down their entire history. These days, we have to spend too much time fighting television and movies that simply don't portray enough elements of the culture."

Anaya, who began his career as a middle school teacher and ended up an emeritus Regent's Professor at the University of New Mexico, lays part of the blame on school systems that have become too result-oriented.

"Education has become far too test-conscious. I wish every grade level had one class-- reading. It's a struggle, but we have to promote literacy. Spreading the word is our only hope to preserve some sense of history."

Spreading the word is a passion for Anaya, an incredibly diverse writer who spends his spare time translating New Mexican folktales for kids. "I write adult books, children's books, essays, short stories and even murder mysteries. Bless Me, Ultima has been used in everything from middle school classes to Ph.D. dissertations. And plays, too; I actually just finished rewriting a couple scenes for a Christmas play that's going to be produced in December."

And when the prolific Anaya touts his Sonny Baca novels as genre fiction, he's being just a bit disingenuous.

"Yeah, they're not really about murders," Anaya admits. "But there is one rule that I've learned--kill somebody off in the first chapter, then a publisher can shoehorn you into the genre. And that's fine with me. I'm working on my fourth one. It's a little something for my own spirituality."