Bless Me, Ultima deserves to be described outside of the implicit claims that it is The Chicano Novel, a category as fishy and as detrimental to any clear thinking about our expectations for fiction as The American Novel category has become. Among other things, the millions of chicanos in the U.S. may feel a unity of ancestry and a community in their oppression, but their experience of life is in no other way unified…. The people of the book themselves, small-scale farmers and cowboys, some possessing more than three centuries of history with their removed corner of the world, would not recognize themselves as "chicanos" at all. "Hispano" is what they were first called; "Mexican" is the name most of them call themselves to this day. (pp. 190-91)
The place of Bless Me, Ultima is a vast place, and spectacular (which my dictionary coolly defines as "exciting wonder and admiration by unusual display"). At the present moment, most of us probably know it best through the good offices of Georgia O'Keeffe. What we sense in her New Mexico landscapes is that we have arrived at the painting at the very moment of climax in an epic struggle by an after-all puny human force with something we could call Bigness Itself. (pp. 191-92)
This is a free excerpt of 211 words. There are 782 words (approx.
3 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Anaya, Rudolfo A(lfonso) 1937–: Critical Essay by Carter Wilson Access Pass.
