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Stories filled with wonder and the haunting beauty of his culture have helped make Rudolfo Anaya the father of Chicano literature in English, and his tales fairly shimmer with the lyric richness of his prose. Acclaimed in both Spanish and English, Anaya is perhaps best loved for his classic bestseller ... Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will test the bonds that tie him to his people, and discover himself in the pagan past, in his father's wisdom, and in his mother's Catholicism. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world-and will nurture the birth of his soul.
Synopsis:
When a curandera comes to stay with a young boy, he tests the bonds that tie him to his culture and finds himself in the secrets of the past.
Victoria Simmons, October 11, 2011 (view all comments by Victoria Simmons)
I met Rudolfo Anaya in Albuquerque, NM, at a book signing. He is beyond charming and his personality is reflected in this amazing book. My mother is Northern New Mexico Spanish and these stories are her life. If you want an inside look at this beautiful culture and its people, I highly recommend this book.
dwrites, September 1, 2011 (view all comments by dwrites)
Beautiful, mysterious tensions and collisions between earth and sea, God and the gods, innocence and knowledge, good and something other than good abound in this novel of a young Chicano in New Mexico in the days during and just after World War II. An incredibly-realized first novel, now nearly 50 years old, by the author some consider the Father of Chicano Literature. The point of view is that of a seven year-old boy entering school and the larger community from his family's life on the plains, as an old woman known to make cures in the old ways comes to live with his family and teaches him what she knows. It's a rough couple of years that passes, with the protagonist seeing more death and ugliness than perhaps a young boy ought to witness first-hand. Antonio tries to grapple with these events through the strong Catholic religion he's growing into, yet also through the paganistic sensibilities of some of his young cohorts, and eventually through the all-knowing eyes of La Curandera herself, as he comes to understand that all things are not knowable, at least not all by way of the same cosmic answers. Opened a world completely unknown to me, and yet is entirely accessible, sympathetic, relevant. If not for some very slight ragged edges, this would rate a 5 for me.
Product details
304 pages
Warner Books -
English9780446675369
Reviews:
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
When a curandera comes to stay with a young boy, he tests the bonds that tie him to his culture and finds himself in the secrets of the past.
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