An Introduction to Bless Me, Ultima

From THE BIG READ'S website:First published in 1972, this semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age novel is one of the most critically acclaimed Chicano novels of all time. Set in rural New Mexico in the 1940s, the novel tells the story of a boy who learns to navigate the changing American landscape during World War II with the help of a curandera (spiritual healer) who guides him through the cultural, religious, and moral contradictions he faces in his community of farmers, priests, cowboys, and soldiers. Like his protagonist, National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellow Rudolfo Anaya grew up in a New Mexico community heavily influenced by both Catholicism and spiritual healers, with a vaquero (cowboy) father and three older brothers who went off to war in their youth. Anaya is an “extraordinary storyteller” that has “always written unpretentiously but provocatively about identity. Every work is a fiesta, a ceremony preserving but reshaping old traditions that honor the power within the land and la raza, the people” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). The film version of the novel directed by Carl Franklin was released in 2013 to critical acclaim.