25th Anniversary Edition, with a new Afterword by the author. Rudolfo Anaya's personal journey to Tortuga began one desert-hot day when, as an adolescent, he and some friends were swimming in irrigation ditches. He dove in, sustaining an injury that put him in the hospital for an arduous period of time. Tortuga is set in a hospital for crippled children and is based on Anaya's swimming accident. He explores the significance of pain and suffering in a young boy's life and the importance of spiritual recovery as well as medical. Tortuga, or Turtle, is the name of the oddly shaped mountain near the hospital, but 'Tortuga' also points toward the rigid cast that encases the young hero's body. In celebration of the twenty-five years since the first edition of Tortuga was published, Rudolfo Anaya has provided an Afterword to share his memories of those days in the hospital and how they impacted the remainder of his life.

The Albuquerque barrio portrayed in this vivid novel of postwar New Mexico is a place where urban and rural, political and religious realities coexist, collide, and combine. The magic realism for which Anaya is well known combines with an emphatic portrayal of the plight of workers dispossessed of their heritage and struggling to survive in an alien culture.

While award-winning author Rudolfo Anaya is known primarily as a novelist, his genius is also evident in dramatic works performed regularly in his native New Mexico and throughout the world. "Billy the Kid and Other Plays" collects seven of these works and offers them together for the first time. Like his novels, many of Anaya's plays are built from the folklore of the Southwest. This volume opens with "The Season of La Llorona," in which Anaya fuses the Mexican legend of the dreaded "crying woman" with that of La Malinche, mistress and adviser to Hernan Cortes. Southwestern lore also shapes the title play, which provides a Mexican American perspective on the Kid--or Bilito, as he is known inNew Mexico--along with keen insight into the slipperiness of history. "The Farolitos of Christmas" and "Matachines" uncover both the sweet and the sinister in stories behind seasonal New Mexican rituals. Other plays here address loss of the old ways--farming, connection to the land, the primacy of family--while showing the power of change. The mystery "Who Killed Don Jose?" uses the murder of a wealthy sheep rancher to look at political corruption and modernization. "Ay, Compadre " and "Angie" address aging and death, though with refreshing humor and optimism. Elegant and poetic, intense and funny, these are the plays Anaya considers his best. The author tells how each originated, while Cecilia J. Aragon and Robert Con Davis- Undiano offer critical analysis and performance history. Both Anaya fans and readers new to his work will find this collection a rich trove, as will community theaters and scholars in Chicano literature and drama.

"When a woman dies after falling from a hot-air balloon at Albuquerque's world-famous balloon fiesta, private investigator Sonny Baca's intuition tells him it's murder. His intuition also tells him that the murder is the work of the Raven, the leader of a violent cult that murdered Sonny's cousin, and a man Sonny thought he'd killed. The murder jeopardizes the millions of tourist dollars connected with the fiesta, but Sonny knows the Raven has more on his mind than simple mayhem. This is a completely entertaining mystery novel, but Anaya actually offers two parallel lands of enchantment. One is temporal New Mexico; the other is Nuevo Mexicano, a land of santos, milagros, spirits, visions, and even brujas (witches). It's a land of old ways, old values, and old wisdom. And it's a land where small farms and multigenerational families are fast being wiped out by modernity."--"Booklist"

New Mexico's master storyteller creates a southwestern version of the Arabian Nights in this fable set in seventeenth-century Santa Fe. In January 1680 a dozen Pueblo Indians are charged with conspiring to incite a revolution against the colonial government. When the prisoners are brought before the Governor, one of them is revealed as a young woman. Educated by the friars in her pueblo's mission church, Serafina speaks beautiful Spanish and surprises the Governor with her fearlessness and intelligence.

The two strike a bargain. She will entertain the Governor by telling him a story. If he likes her story, he will free one of the prisoners. Like Scheherazade, who prevented her royal husband from killing her by telling him stories, Serafina keeps the Governor so entertained with her versions of Nuevo Mexicano cuentos that he spares the lives of all her fellow prisoners.

Some of the stories Serafina tells will have a familiar ring to them, for they came from Europe and were New Mexicanized by the Spanish colonists. Some have Pueblo Indian plots and characters - and it is this blending of the two cultures that is Anaya's true subject.

Exquisite prose and wondrous storytelling have helped make Rudolfo Anaya the father of Chicano literature in English. Indeed, Anaya's tales fairly shimmer with the haunting beauty and richness of his culture. The winner of the Pen Center West Award for Fiction for his unforgettable novel Alburquerque, Anaya is perhaps best loved for his classic bestseller, Bless Me, Ultima... Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past-a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world...and will nurture the birth of his soul.

"[Rudolfo Anaya] continues to shine brightest with his trademark alchemy: blending Spanish, Mexican and Indian cultures to evoke the distinctively fecund spiritual terrain of his part of the Southwest. Here Sonny Baca, a 30-year-old fledgling PI, investigates the murder of his . . . cousin [Gloria] who many years before had introduced him to love. Gloria's husband is worried most about the effect of the gruesome death (Gloria's body is found drained of blood, with a zia sun sign carved on her stomach) on his mayoral campaign in Albuquerque. Sonny believes Gloria's spirit calls to him for vengeance and pursues the case throughout New Mexico's South Valley, from the cocktail-party circuit of the arts community and the company of monied business developers to an assemblage of witches in an environmentalist commune in the mountains. . . ."--"Publisher's Weekly"

." . . a compelling thriller. . . . Though satisfying purely as a mystery, the novel sacrifices none of Anaya's trademark spirituality--a connectedness to the earth and a deep-seated respect for the traditions of a people and a culture. . . . Read this multidimensional novel for its rich language and full-bodied characters. Anaya is one of our greatest storytellers, and "Zia Summer" is "muy caliente!""--"Booklist"

Stories filled with wonder and the haunting beauty of his culture have helped make Rudolfo Anaya the father of Chicano literature in English, and his tales fairly shimmer with the lyric richness of his prose. Acclaimed in both Spanish and English, Anaya is perhaps best loved for his classic bestseller ... Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will test the bonds that tie him to his people, and discover himself in the pagan past, in his father's wisdom, and in his mother's Catholicism. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world-and will nurture the birth of his soul.

New Mexico cultural envoy Juan Estevan Arellano, to whom this work is dedicated, writes that querencia "is that which gives us a sense of place, that which anchors us to the land, that which makes us a unique people, for it implies a deeply rooted knowledge of place, and for that reason we respect it as our home." This sentiment is echoed in the foreword by Rudolfo Anaya, in which he writes that "querencia is love of home, love of place." This collection of both deeply personal reflections and carefully researched studies explores the New Mexico homeland through the experiences and perspectives of Chicanx and indigenous/Genizaro writers and scholars from across the state. The importance of querencia for each contributor is apparent in their work and their ongoing studies, which have roots in the culture, history, literature, and popular media of New Mexico. Be inspired and enlightened by these essays and discover the history and belonging that is querencia.

Jade is a young girl who lives in a village next to a towering volcano. On its peak lives a Mountain Spirit who makes his presence known by rumbling the earth, filling the sky with smoke, and pouring lava down the mountainside. Angered by those who forget to honor him for providing their harvest, the Mountain Spirit has stopped sending rain to Jade's village and the people are faced with the possibility of having to abandon their homes and land.

As Jade collects water from the near-dry lake, a blue hummingbird--a messenger from the Mountain Spirit--tells Jade she must take a gift to the Mountain Spirit and ask for rain. Guided by the hummingbird, Jade presents her food offering to the Mountain Spirit. Pleased, the spirit offers the brave girl corn kernels that she takes back to her village and uses to create the first tortilla.

In this second ChupaCabra mystery, Professor Rosa Medina has just arrived in Santa Fe where she meets Nadine, a mysterious sixteen-year-old who insists that the two of them travel to Roswell, New Mexico. Nadine is convinced that C-Force, a secret government agency, has decoded the DNA of ChupaCabra and an extraterrestrial. If the two genomes are combined, a new and horrific life form will be created.

In this fast-paced mystery, Anaya expands the ChupaCabra folklore into a metaphor that deals with the new powers inherent in science. Is ChupaCabra a beast in Latino folktales, used to frighten children, or a lost species being manipulated by C-Force? Rosa's life hangs in the balance as she and her young accomplice try to find a way to stop C-Force before its mad scientists create a monster.

The legend of Quetzalcoatl is the enduring epic myth of Mesoamerica. The gods create the universe, but man must carefully tend to the harmony of the world. Without spiritual attention to harmony, chaos may reign, destroying the universe and civilisation. The ancient Mexicans, like other peoples throughout the world, wrestled with ideas and metaphors by which to know the Godhead and developed their own concepts about their relationship to the universe. Quetzalcoatl came to the Toltecs to teach them art, agriculture, peace, and knowledge. He was a redeemer god, and his story inspires, instructs, and entertains, as do all the great myths of the world. Now available in paperback, Lord of the Dawn is Anaya's exploration of the cosmology and the rich and complex spiritual thought of his Native American ancestors. The story depicts the daily world of man, the struggle between the peacemakers and the warmongers, and the world of the gods and their role in the life of mankind.

When the governor of New Mexico is found drowned in the Bath House at Jemez Springs, Albuquerque private eye Sonny Baca is called in to investigate. As he soon learns, murder is only the beginning of the evil that Sonny must sort out. Someone has planted a bomb in the Valles Caldera, not far from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and it is set to detonate in just a few hours. Is this the work of terrorists or is Sonny's old nemesis, Raven, mixed up in the plot? In a race against the clock Sonny encounters ghosts and sorcerers, beautiful women and environmental activists, and developers and politicians who are quarrelling over the state's most precious resource, its water.

This third installment of Rudolfo Anaya's ""Sonny Baca"" mystery series has the private detective confined to a wheelchair. Brutal battles with his nemesis Raven have taken their toll and Baca is struggling to regain his health. Nights of fitful sleep and intermittent dreams introduce Owl Woman, one of Sonny's ancestors and the sixteenth-century daughter of a shaman. As Sonny sleeps, Raven abducts Owl Woman and soon, one by one, each of Sonny's forebears begin to disappear. Immobilizing Sonny physically was Raven's first goal; now he wants to destroy Sonny's soul by erasing his history.

"The storyteller's gift is my inheritance," writes Rudolfo Anaya in his essay "Shaman of Words." Although he is best known for Bless Me, Ultima and other novels, his writing also takes the form of nonfiction, and in these 52 essays he draws on both his heritage as a Mexican American and his gift for storytelling. Besides tackling issues such as censorship, racism, education, and sexual politics, Anaya explores the tragedies and triumphs of his own life.Collected here are Anaya's published essays. Despite his wide acclaim as the founder of Chicano literature, no previous volume has attempted to gather Anaya's nonfiction into one edition. A companion to The Man Who Could Fly and Other Stories, the collection of Anaya's short stories, The Essays is an essential anthology for followers of Anaya and those interested in Chicano literature. Pieces such as "Requiem for a Lowrider," "La Llorona, El KookoOee, and Sexuality," and "An American Chicano in King Arthur's Court" take the reader from the llano of eastern New Mexico, where Anaya grew up, to the barrios of Albuquerque, and from the devastating diving accident that nearly ended his life at sixteen to the career he has made as an author and teacher. The point is not autobiography, although a life story is told, nor is it advocacy, although Anaya argues persuasively for cultural change. Instead, the author provides shrewd commentary on modern America in all its complexity. All the while, he employs the elegant, poetic voice and the interweaving of myth and folklore that inspire his fiction. "Stories reveal our human nature and thus become powerful tools for insight and revelation," writes Anaya. This collection of prose offers abundant new insight and revelation.

Readers of Rudolfo Anaya's fiction know the lyricism of his prose, but most do not know him as a poet. In this, his first collection of poetry, Anaya presents twenty-eight of his best poems, most of which have never before been published. Featuring works written in English and Spanish over the course of three decades, Poems from the Rio Grande offers readers a full body of work showcasing Anaya's literary and poetic imagination. Although the poems gathered here take a variety of forms - haiku, elegy, epic - all are imbued with the same lyrical and satirical styles that underlie Anaya's fiction. Together they make a fascinating complement to the novels, stories, and plays for which he is well known. In verse, Anaya explores every aspect of Chicano identity, beginning with memories of his childhood in a small New Mexico village and ending with mature reflections on being a Chicano who considers himself connected to all peoples. The collection articulates the themes at the heart of all Anaya's work: nostalgia for the landscape and customs of his boyhood in rural New Mexico, a deep connection to the Rio Grande, the politics of Chicanismo and satire aimed at it, and the use of myth and history as metaphor. Anaya also illustrates his familiarity with world traditions of poetry, invoking Walt Whitman, Homer, and the Bible. The poem to Isis that concludes the collection honors Anaya's wife, Patricia, and reflects his increasing identification with spiritual traditions across the globe. Both profeta and vato, seer and homeboy, Anaya as author is a citizen of the world. Poems from the Rio Grande offers readers a glimpse into his development as a poet and as one of the most celebrated Chicano authors of our time.

""The world is full of sorrow,"" Agapita whispered to Alfonso. Did she stamp those words into his destiny? The story of Alfonso, a Nuevo Mexicano, begins with his birth, when the curandera Agapita delivers these haunting words into his infant ear. What then unfolds is an elegiac song to the llanos of New Mexico where Alfonso comes of age. As this exquisite novel charts Alfonso's life journey from childhood through his education and evolution as a writer, renowned Chicano author Rudolfo Anaya invites readers to reflect on the truths and mysteries of the human condition. Because Alfonso ""didn't write his own biography,"" it falls to his childhood friend, the anonymous narrator here, to tell his story, through a series of letters addressed to a mysterious figure named K. The narrator depicts young Alfonso caught between dual influences: his beloved, devout Catholic mother, Rafaelita, and the folk healer Agapita. After suffering a terrible accident that leaves him physically handicapped, Alfonso faces intellectual crises during his university years, all of which move him down the path of his destiny. In describing these events, the ""old man"" writing the letters interweaves Alfonso's experiences with fragments of his own life and of the New Mexican llano that both men have called home. The trajectory of Alfonso's life in turn mirrors the history of New Mexico and the turbulent beginnings of the Chicano movement in which the young protagonist plays a trailblazing role. As story builds upon story, the commonality of traits among the narrator, his subject, and perhaps Anaya himself appears more than coincidental. Permeated by Anaya's trademark religious and mythological imagery, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso is a luminous meditation on memory, reality, and the human experience.

For ages 4-8. In this bilingual story of faith, Don Jacobo has a dream that, in the end, is a reminder that miracles do happen. Jacobo is teaching his visiting grandson Andres how to become a santero. Christmas is coming, snow is falling in the village, and the two are working on a carving of San Isidro, the patron saint of farmers. The half-finished carving stands in the living room beside the two oxen and the angel that don Jacobo carved earlier in the month. The snow-covered mountains are beautiful, but the road to the village is impassable. Andres's parents will not be able to get to the house for the holiday, and Jacobo's neighbor Leopoldo is desperately ill but cannot get to the hospital. Then comes Jacobo's dream; San Isidro is plowing with the two oxen and the angel is helping. ""But we don't plow 'til April,"" don Jacobo muses upon awakening. ""What does it mean?"" The night had been bitterly cold and don Jacobo must bundle up to go to the barn to feed his cows and chickens. As he steps outside, he can hardly believe his eyes. The snow-packed road is clear. Rudolfo Anaya's story of the power of faith, hope, and love will be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

When he was a young man, Randy Lopez left his village in northern New Mexico to seek his fortune. Since then, he has learned some of the secrets of success in the Anglo world--and even written a book called" Life Among the Gringos." But something has been missing. Now he returns to Agua Bendita to reconnect with his past and to find the wisdom the Anglo world has not provided. In this allegorical account of Randy's final journey, master storyteller Rudolfo Anaya tackles life's big questions with a light touch.
Randy's entry into the haunted canyon that leads to his ancestral home begins on the Day of the Dead. Reuniting with his "padrinos"--his godparents--and hoping to meet up with his lost love, Sofia, Randy encounters a series of spirits: coyotes, cowboys, Death, and the devil. Each one engages him in a conversation about life. It is Randy's old teacher Miss Libriana who suggests his new purpose. She gives him a book, " How to Build a Bridge." Only the bridge--which is both literal and figurative, like everything else in this story--can enable Randy to complete his journey.
Readers acquainted with Anaya's fiction will find themselves in familiar territory here. Randy Lopez, like all Anaya's protagonists, is on a spiritual quest. But both those new to and familiar with Anaya will recognize this philosophical meditation as part of a long literary tradition going back to Homer, Dante, and the Bible. Richly allusive and uniquely witty, "Randy Lopez Goes Home" presents man's quest for meaning in a touching, thought-provoking narrative that will resound with young adults and mature readers alike.

"Levi Romero is a strange kind of wizard. He can walk up a New Mexico arroyo and come back with a mysterious object full of quotidian magic. Like a rusted tobacco can the grand-fathers used to roll their smokes. And when you pry open the lid, you can hear their laughter and gossip coming out. That's what he does in poem after poem. I read his work and I learn again how to love this life."--Luis Alberto Urrea

Through familiar details--leaking faucets and lowriders, "chicharrones" and chicken coops--Levi Romero remembers "familia, comunidad, " and "tradiciones" from his upbringing in northern New Mexico's Embudo Valley. Alongside his training and jobs in the building trades and the architectural profession, and now a teacher, his writing has maintained and nurtured his connection to the unique people and land he knows so well and that have seldom been represented in American poetry.

"The world is full of sorrow," Agapita whispered to Alfonso. Did she stamp those words into his destiny? The story of Alfonso, a Nuevo Mexicano, begins with his birth, when the curandera Agapita delivers these haunting words into his infant ear. What then unfolds is an elegiac song to the llanos of New Mexico where Alfonso comes of age. As this exquisite novel charts Alfonso's life journey from childhood through his education and evolution as a writer, renowned Chicano author Rudolfo Anaya invites readers to reflect on the truths and mysteries of the human condition. Because Alfonso "didn't write his own biography," it falls to his childhood friend, the anonymous narrator here, to tell his story, through a series of letters addressed to a mysterious figure named K. The narrator depicts young Alfonso caught between dual influences: his beloved, devout Catholic mother, Rafaelita, and the folk healer Agapita. After suffering a terrible accident that leaves him physically handicapped, Alfonso faces intellectual crises during his university years, all of which move him down the path of his destiny. In describing these events, the "old man" writing the letters interweaves Alfonso's experiences with fragments of his own life and of the New Mexican llano that both men have called home. The trajectory of Alfonso's life in turn mirrors the history of New Mexico and the turbulent beginnings of the Chicano movement in which the young protagonist plays a trailblazing role. As story builds upon story, the commonality of traits among the narrator, his subject, and perhaps Anaya himself appears more than coincidental. Permeated by Anaya's trademark religious and mythological imagery, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso is a luminous meditation on memory, reality, and the human experience.

During the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the idea of Aztlan, homeland of the ancient Aztecs, served as a unifying force in an emerging cultural renaissance. Does the term remain useful? This expanded new edition of the classic 1989 collection of essays about Aztlan weighs its value. To encompass new developments in the discourse the editors have added six new essays.