Rudolfo A. Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima is a fantastic choice for this fall’s Lobo Reading Experience.
No matter a student’s background, the novel has a lot to offer. For the new student trying to decide what to make with his/her life, it provides encouragement. For the older student struggling for inspiration, the novel provides the courage to stand by your decisions and carve your own destiny. And for a newcomer to New Mexico, like myself, the novel is an exciting introductory course to New Mexican tradition and culture.
Set in the 1940s, the novel tells the story of Antonio Juan Márez y Luna, a 7-year-old boy who is torn between fulfilling his father’s and mother’s separate and ambitious dreams of what he is to become.
As he begins to lose his innocence and his family begins to disintegrate, doubts begin to emerge about his Catholic upbringing and his role in life. Fortunately, he is blessed with the guidance of Ultima, an old curandera, who, according to Antonio’s prophetic dreams, knows his true destiny.
Anaya’s prose is beautifully elegiac as he describes our connection to the land, as if New Mexico wasn’t the Land of Enchantment until Anaya told us how to see it. And his construction is perfect: There is not a single weak sentence in the book. Anaya’s treatment of the age-old struggle between good and evil masterfully combines past, present and future through allegorical stories and prophetic dreams.
Although the novel tells the story of the coming of age of a 7-year-old boy, the story is much bigger than that. Antonio deals with forces much larger and older than himself. In Anaya’s world, the children are accountable for the sins of their parents. Sin weighs heavily on the land, but the sins go beyond sins against man or God. Losing touch with the land is as serious a sin as blasphemy.
The novel feels like an older coming-of-age story than it really is. Anaya seems to be conscious of his children who speak prophetically beyond their age. There are two groups of children, really. The children with only nicknames, like Horse, Bones and the Vitamin Kid, offer a fresh contrast to the heavy thoughts of the vatic thinkers like Antonio, Cico and Florence. But still, though these kids are capable of lofty thought, their ever-shrinking innocence provides perspective to the deep questions raised in the novel. Life has been too hard on them to allow them to be children.
Any person, and students especially, will relate well to Antonio’s struggle with fate and choice. Anaya is not afraid to explore the questions and doubts that plague all of us as we, like Antonio, strive to etch our own destinies into the stone. Anaya takes us to the mountain peak, offering us perspective but not direction. He presents a world with dozens of gods, encouraging us to decide for ourselves which god, if any, we will serve.
No matter the choice, though, the most important thing is that we choose to be good, for “the smallest bit of good can stand against all the powers of evil in the world and it will emerge triumphant.”
Bless Me, Ultima is simply too good to miss out on. It is more than a novel — it is an experience, a baptizing fire that urges its readers to fulfill their destinies and live in peace with each other and
the world.
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