Bless Me, Ultima
Rudolfo Anaya (1972)
“A boy grows up in the New Mexico desert between two worlds — and a healer with an owl arrives to guide him through both.”
At a Glance
Six-year-old Antonio Márez y Luna watches Ultima, an elderly curandera (healer), come to live with his family in Guadalupe, New Mexico, during and after World War II. As Antonio grows, he witnesses Ultima's battles against evil brujas, the death of his friends, and his own crisis of faith — torn between his father's nomadic vaquero heritage and his mother's farming, Catholic Luna family. Through Ultima's guidance, he learns that truth lives in the harmony between opposites, not in choosing sides.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Bless Me, Ultima is the founding text of Chicano literary fiction. Published by a small Chicano press after major publishers rejected it, it won the first Premio Quinto Sol and launched Anaya's career and the broader recognition of Chicano literature as a distinct and serious literary tradition. It is now one of the most frequently taught novels in high school and college courses across the American Southwest, and frequently appears on AP Literature exams. It has sold over 400,000 copies.
Diction Profile
Lyrical English with oral Spanish cadences — formal in emotional register, accessible in diction, multilingual in texture
High but naturalistic