Born to Rafaelita and Martin Anaya on October 30, 1937, Rudolfo Anaya is one of the youngest in a family of ten siblings; a large family not much different from the other families in the small village of Pastura, New Mexico. Anaya perceives himself and his work as inseparable not only from his extended community, but from the specific landscapes that surrounded his childhood. 

The rugged eastern planes, along with other distinct locations in New Mexico naturally provide the unique setting to Anaya’s novels, stories, plays, and poetry. But furthermore, they infuse the plots and characters with the views, the sounds, the scents and the flavors of a place that is more than a backdrop; a place that is a living, breathing character in and of itself.

“Soon after I was born”, tells Anaya, “We moved to Santa Rosa, which was on Highway 66. For me that road was the link between the East and the west. There was much life there. Santa Rosa is a geographical setting, in a sense, that I use to set the stage for Bless me, Ultima”.

The Pecos River Valley of Santa Rosa, the town and its people, and the formative experiences that marked his childhood feature in great detail in Anaya’s 1972 novel, Bless Me, Ultima, a groundbreaking work in Chicano Literature.

It was in Santa Rosa, a rural agro-pastoral town, that Anaya developed his love for nature, spending much of his time out of doors, playing and exploring with friends.  It was there, too, that he heard many stories that would late inspire his writing; “cuentos” told in Spanish by family members and community elders recounting tales filled with the characteristically Hispanic mix of indigenous, earth-based spirituality and a deeply-entrenched Catholic tradition. The cuentos of his childhood, as Anaya explains, infused him with a sense of pride, a strong sense of belonging to the land and to a rich history that includes centuries of colonization in the region: first by the Spaniards, and later by the Anglo-Americans.

In 1952, when Anaya was a teenager, his family, like many other families, was forced by changing economic conditions to move to the big city of Albuquerque in search of wage-labor work that was quickly replacing the traditional lifeways of small-scale subsistence farming. The move to the city facilitated a time of accelerated personal growth and intellectual expansion for the young Anaya; adventures, experiences, observations, and insights that are reflected in detail in his prose and poetry.

After graduating from high school in 1956, he first enrolled in business school, and then at the University of New Mexico, where he discovered his interest in literature. After receiving his B.A. in English he began his teaching career at the elementary and then secondary levels. Before long, however, his own passion for learning led him back to the University of New Mexico for an M.A. in English, followed by another M.A., this time in guidance counseling. In 1974, after the unprecedented success of Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya was invited to teach at his alma mater. Despite never obtaining a PhD, Anaya’s talent and commitment to teaching earned him a full professorship at the University of New Mexico, where he taught creative writing until his retirement in 1993.

In 1966, Anaya married Patricia Lawless, a fellow graduate student in the guidance counseling program at the University of New Mexico. The two shared many interests such as literature, teaching, and of course counseling. Over the course of Anaya’s writing career, Patricia was not only an encouraging fan, but a talented editor and important critic of his work. She herself was a writer, a teacher, and had a long career as a counselor at Cibola high School in Albuquerque. Rudolfo and Patricia were married for 34 years and had two daughters, Elynn and Melissa, several grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren at the time of Patricia’s passing, at the age of 85, in 2010.

Anaya’s accomplishments exceed those of a successful author. He is an educator, an active community member, and a generous supporter of young scholars and writers. The many awards and honors he has received over the years in his life.

Source: anaya.unm.edu