Rudolfo Anaya: Bless Me, Ultima

This book came highly recommended from one of my coworkers who loves this novel. I have a goal of trying to read every novel in my classroom library, and since I had this one, I decided to give it a shot.

Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya follows the story of Antonio Marez as he grows into adolescence. Antonio lives in New Mexico with his family. His family has a divided past, and Tony must pick which direction he wants to go. Will he be a priest like his mother desires? When Tony is six, Ultima comes to live with them, a curandera, who heals with herbs and magic. It is Ultima who often guides Tony through his battle between his mother's Catholicism, and his father's desire for freedom.

This book is hard to review. On the one hand, I really enjoyed the mysticism and the magic and devils. The story is beautifully described, and the characters are deep and fascinating. The battle Tony fights between what his parents each want for him is also particularly poignant, even though I'm not Catholic. It highlights the expectations communities have for the children who live within them (whether those are religious expectations or something else), and I think it also highlights the difficulties of have parents in two separate realms of belief - where the parents are two separate religions, or one does not believe in religion while the other does. Tony is deeply conflicted with the things he witnesses, and even questions Catholicism and God throughout his journey.

On the other hand, I had a really hard time with the setting of this book. I think this is probably what I got so hung up on. It's discussion of witches and devils and magic almost made it feel like it was set in the 1800s. But they also have cars, Tony's dad works on the roads, and his brothers are off fighting in WWII. I suppose it shows my ignorance of Chicano culture and the southwest during that period, but it didn't feel right.

In the end, I rated this book ⭐⭐⭐

It does have some content in it, some discussion of prostitution.

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