Rudolfo Anaya

Rudolfo Anaya
Born Rudolfo Anaya
October 30, 1937 (1937-10-30) (age 74)
Pastura, New Mexico
Occupation novelist, poet
Nationality USA
Notable work(s) Bless Me, Ultima
Albuquerque
Notable award(s) American Book Award; Quinto Sol; National Medal of Arts

Rudolfo Anaya (born October 30, 1937) is an Mexican-American author. Best known for his 1972 novel Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya is considered one of the founders of the canon of contemporary Chicano literature.[1]

Contents

Biography

Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya was born in the rural village of Pastura, New Mexico, to Martin and Rafaelita Anaya.[2] His father came from a family of cattle workers and sheepherders, and his mother’s family were farmers.[3] Anaya was the fifth of their seven children together; he also had three half-siblings from his parents’ previous marriages.[4] When Anaya was a small child, his family moved to Santa Rosa, New Mexico.[5] In 1952, they relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they lived in the Barelas neighborhood.[3] Spanish was spoken at home, and Anaya did not learn English until he started school.[6]

When he was a teenager, Anaya suffered a diving accident while swimming with friends in an irrigation ditch and broke two vertebrae in his neck.[7] At first rendered paralyzed by the accident, he eventually made a substantial recovery, learning to walk again though never becoming entirely free of pain.[8] In 1956, Anaya graduated from an Albuquerque high school.[5] He then attended business school for two years, but he found it unfulfilling.[9] He transferred to the University of New Mexico, where he graduated in 1963 with a degree in English.[5] l Anaya worked as a public school teacher in Albuquerque from 1963 to 1970.[10] In 1966, he married Patricia Lawless, who would serve as his editor over the years.[11] She encouraged him to pursue his literary endeavors, and over a period of seven years, he completed his first novel, Bless Me, Ultima.[9] Dozens of publishing houses rejected the novel.[12] Finally, in 1972, a group of editors at El Grito, a Chicano quarterly, accepted the book.[13] Bless Me, Ultima went on to win the prestigious Premio Quinto Sol award and is now considered a classic Chicano work.[5] It was chosen as one of the books of The Big Read, a community-reading program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.[14] It is also one of the literary works in 2009 of the United States Academic Decathlon.[15] Anaya followed Bless Me, Ultima with Heart of Aztlan (1978) and Tortuga (1979), forming a trilogy.

In 1974, Anaya accepted a position as an associate professor at the University of New Mexico.[5] He became a full professor in the Department of English Language and Literature in 1988.[16] Since retiring from the University in 1993 as a Professor Emeritus, Anaya has continued to write, completing—among other works—the novel Alburquerque and the Sonny Baca quartet of detective novels. He has recently published a number of books for children and young adults.

List of Books

Fiction

Sonny Baca series

Books for children

Non-fiction and Anthologies

Poetry

Published or Performed Plays

Awards and honors

[3]

References

  1. ^ Cesar A. Gonzales-T., The Ritual and Myth of Experience in the Works of Rudolfo A. Anaya, published in A Sense of Place: Rudolfo A. Anaya: An Annotated Bio-Bibliography (2000).
  2. ^ Gonzales-T, Morgan, Phyllis S., A Sense of Place: Rudolfo A. Anaya: An Annotated Bio-Bibliography (2000).
  3. ^ a b c Author Bio at Gale
  4. ^ Ibid.
  5. ^ a b c d e A Sense of Place, supra.
  6. ^ Rudolfo Anaya, Autobiography: As written in 1985, TOS Publications.
  7. ^ Ibid.
  8. ^ Ibid.
  9. ^ a b Autobiography, supra.
  10. ^ Ibid.
  11. ^ Ibid.
  12. ^ Ibid.
  13. ^ Ibid.
  14. ^ NEA The Big Read.
  15. ^ [1] United States Academic Decathlon.
  16. ^ Ibid.

External links