SOURCE: “Rudolfo Anaya,” in This is about Vision: Interviews with Southwestern Writers, edited by William Balassi, John F. Crawford, and Annie O. Eysturoy, University of New Mexico Press, 1990, pp. 83–93.

In the following interview, originally conducted in May 1986, Anaya comments on his formative influences, the development of Chicano literature, his interest in mythology, and the problems of cultural identity and political consciousness in Bless Me, Ultima, Heart of Aztlán, and Tortuga.

Rudolfo Anaya—novelist, short story writer, oral historian, editor, and college professor—has spoken frequently of his relationship to the llano, the harsh rangeland of eastern New Mexico, and his role as a groundbreaking Chicano novelist of the 1970s. Born in 1937, he grew up in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, where he attended school through the eighth grade. He moved with his parents to Albuquerque to complete his schooling at Washington Junior High and Albuquerque High School (1956), and...