Required Reading: “Bless Me, Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya

By Justin Wymer
St. Albans High School

If you’ve never heard of this title, then you probably haven’t been listening to your English teachers. “Bless Me, Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya is a book long plucked from the Chicano plains that has made its way to the top of many AP Literature reading lists.

It’s New Mexico in the 1940s. You’re 6 years old, speak only Spanish and are about to commence learning math, science, history and English consecutively by attending an English-speaking school.

This is the story of Antonio Márez, who for most of his life has known only manual labor, meager meals and the sight of blood-red sunsets set against the unceasing plains. He is about to begin school and try to solidify his mother’s dream that he’ll become a priest.

“Tony” is excited to begin school, to escape the two worlds between which he is torn: the world of his father, whose life is spent wandering the llano plains; and the realm of his mother, the daughter of farmers, who dreams that he’ll become a priest and bring salvation to his family.

Everything changes when Ultima, a curandera, or folk healer, comes to stay with Tony’s family. She nurtures the blooming of his soul while teaching him about the buds of plants, for she is a sort of apothecary who uses herbs to heal ailments and wisdom to decide what’s a problem.

As he grows older, Tony begins to question everything he’s ever believed. He finds religion a road that’s both comforting and filled with potholes. Innocence forces him to make decisions between the teachings of his Catholic catechisms and Ultima’s pagan spirituality.

The story’s main external conflict occurs when Tony’s uncle, Lucas, is cursed by three satanic sisters called the Trementinas. Ultima is recruited to counter this evil with her powers, and she succeeds in both solving a problem and causing multiple deaths.

Death is how the story ends, and the word pangs in Tony’s mind repeatedly, for he experiences many over the course of the story. These instances are partly what force him to mature emotionally, finally sifting truth from his childhood misconceptions about life.

This novel deals largely with the disenchantment that comes with the death of innocence.

As the plot comes to a climax, Tony discovers that life is not as he’s always envisioned. Nature is beautiful, but it takes the very lives that it birthed in the first place. His brothers are role models, but their secrets smell of vices he never dreamed he’d have to acknowledge. “Bless Me, Ultima” is a well-crafted coming-of-age novel.

As my English teacher would say, works of magical realism often force you to suspend your disbelief in order to fully immerse yourself in the stories. The difference here is that Anaya masterfully weaves his own pagan beliefs into a work that doesn’t force you to disagree.

He writes with a passion that makes you want to believe in sorcery, in the idea of a golden carp being a god and in the power of a curandera. But you can enjoy the story even if you oppose everything he has to say. I think that’s what has cemented his role in literary history — his ability to write with conviction in his own beliefs but depict it beautifully enough to be appealing to everyone.

Written by as talented an author as Anaya and with a plot that continually twists in riveting directions, it’s no surprise that “Bless Me, Ultima” has earned a spot in classical literature.