Bless Me, Ultima (Penguin Vitae) - Hardcover

Anaya, Rudolfo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0143137220 ISBN 13: 9780143137221

Verlag: Penguin Classics, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A collectible hardcover 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling Chicano novel of all time, featuring a new foreword by Erika L. Sánchez, the New York Times bestselling author of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

A Penguin Vitae Edition

Although only six years old, Antonio Marez is perceptive beyond his years. He was brought into the world with the help of Ultima, a curandera, or folk healer, in touch with nature and the spirit world. Revered by some as a wisewoman but rebuked by others as a witch, Ultima has now come back to stay with Tony’s family in New Mexico. As Tony seeks out his destiny—torn between his mother’s farming forebears and his father’s wandering vaquero roots, between Spanish Catholicism and the gods of his indigenous ancestors—Ultima’s loving tutelage will help him navigate questions of life and death, good and evil, and reveal to him the vastness of the heritage that shapes him, in this pioneering work of literature.

Penguin Vitae—loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life”—is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rudolfo Anaya (1937-2020) was a New Mexican novelist and essayist, and one of the founding voices in modern Chicanx literature. A professor at the University of New Mexico and a lifelong champion of Chicanx voices who devoted himself to supporting aspiring writers, he received many literary awards, including the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, the Premio Quinto Sol National Chicano literary award, the Notable New Mexican Award, and the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction. His debut novel, Bless Me, Ultima, was named a Great American Read by PBS, and has been adapted into a feature film, an opera, and several stage plays.

Erika L. Sánchez (foreword) is the New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award finalist I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, the poetry collection Lessons on Expulsion, and the memoir-in-essays Crying in the Bathroom. She lives in Chicago, where she is the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz chair of Latin American and Latino studies at DePaul University.

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Uno

 

Ultima came to stay with us the summer I was almost seven. When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood. She took my hand, and the silent, magic powers she possessed made beauty from the raw, sun-baked llano, the green river valley, and the blue bowl which was the white sun's home. My bare feet felt the throbbing earth and my body trembled with excitement. Time stood still, and it shared with me all that had been, and all that was to come. . . .

 

Let me begin at the beginning. I do not mean the beginning that was in my dreams and the stories they whispered to me about my birth, and the people of my father and mother, and my three brothers-but the beginning that came with Ultima.

 

The attic of our home was partitioned into two small rooms. My sisters, Deborah and Theresa, slept in one and I slept in the small cubicle by the door. The wooden steps creaked down into a small hallway that led into the kitchen. From the top of the stairs I had a vantage point into the heart of our home, my mother's kitchen. From there I was to see the terrified face of Ch‡vez when he brought the terrible news of the murder of the sheriff; I was to see the rebellion of my brothers against my father; and many times late at night I was to see Ultima returning from the llano where she gathered the herbs that can be harvested only in the light of the full moon by the careful hands of a curandera.

 

That night I lay very quietly in my bed, and I heard my father and mother speak of Ultima.

 

"Est‡ sola," my father said, "ya no queda gente en el pueblito de Las Pasturas-"

 

He spoke in Spanish, and the village he mentioned was his home. My father had been a vaquero all his life, a calling as ancient as the coming of the Spaniard to Nuevo MŽjico. Even after the big rancheros and the tejanos came and fenced the beautiful llano, he and those like him continued to work there, I guess because only in that wide expanse of land and sky could they feel the freedom their spirits needed.

 

"QuŽ l‡stima," my mother answered, and I knew her nimble fingers worked the pattern on the doily she crocheted for the big chair in the sala.

 

I heard her sigh, and she must have shuddered too when she thought of Ultima living alone in the loneliness of the wide llano. My mother was not a woman of the llano, she was the daughter of a farmer. She could not see beauty in the llano and she could not understand the coarse men who lived half their lifetimes on horseback. After I was born in Las Pasturas she persuaded my father to leave the llano and bring her family to the town of Guadalupe where she said there would be opportunity and school for us. The move lowered my father in the esteem of his compadres, the other vaqueros of the llano who clung tenaciously to their way of life and freedom. There was no room to keep animals in town so my father had to sell his small herd, but he would not sell his horse so he gave it to a good friend, Benito Campos. But Campos could not keep the animal penned up because somehow the horse was very close to the spirit of the man, and so the horse was allowed to roam free and no vaquero on that llano would throw a lazo on that horse. It was as if someone had died, and they turned their gaze from the spirit that walked the earth.

 

It hurt my father's pride. He saw less and less of his old compadres. He went to work on the highway and on Saturdays after they collected their pay he drank with his crew at the Longhorn, but he was never close to the men of the town. Some weekends the llaneros would come into town for supplies and old amigos like Bonney or Campos or the Gonzales brothers would come by to visit. Then my father's eyes lit up as they drank and talked of the old days and told the old stories. But when the western sun touched the clouds with orange and gold the vaqueros got in their trucks and headed home, and my father was left to drink alone in the long night. Sunday morning he would get up very crudo and complain about having to go to early mass.

 

"-She served the people all her life, and now the people are scattered, driven like tumbleweeds by the winds of war. The war sucks everything dry," my father said solemnly, "it takes the young boys overseas, and their families move to California where there is work-"

 

"Ave Mar’a Purisima," my mother made the sign of the cross for my three brothers who were away at war. "Gabriel," she said to my father, "it is not right that la Grande be alone in her old age-"

 

"No," my father agreed.

 

"When I married you and went to the llano to live with you and raise your family, I could not have survived without la Grande's help. Oh, those were hard years-"

 

"Those were good years," my father countered. But my mother would not argue.

 

"There isn't a family she did not help," she continued, "no road was too long for her to walk to its end to snatch somebody from the jaws of death, and not even the blizzards of the llano could keep her from the appointed place where a baby was to be delivered-"

 

"Es verdad," my father nodded.

 

"She tended me at the birth of my sons-" And then I knew her eyes glanced briefly at my father. "Gabriel, we cannot let her live her last days in loneliness-"

 

"No," my father agreed, "it is not the way of our people."

 

"It would be a great honor to provide a home for la Grande," my mother murmured. My mother called Ultima la Grande out of respect. It meant the woman was old and wise.

 

"I have already sent word with Campos that Ultima is to come and live with us," my father said with some satisfaction. He knew it would please my mother.

 

"I am grateful," my mother said tenderly, "perhaps we can repay a little of the kindness la Grande has given to so many."

 

"And the children?" my father asked. I knew why he expressed concern for me and my sisters. It was because Ultima was a curandera, a woman who knew the herbs and remedies of the ancients, a miracle-worker who could heal the sick. And I had heard that Ultima could lift the curses laid by brujas, that she could exorcise the evil the witches planted in people to make them sick. And because a curandera had this power she was misunderstood and often suspected of practicing witchcraft herself.

 

I shuddered and my heart turned cold at the thought. The cuentos of the people were full of the tales of evil done by brujas.

 

"She helped bring them into the world, she cannot be but good for the children," my mother answered.

 

"Est‡ bien," my father yawned, "I will go for her in the morning."

 

So it was decided that Ultima should come and live with us. I knew that my father and mother did good by providing a home for Ultima. It was the custom to provide for the old and the sick. There was always room in the safety and warmth of la familia for one more person, be that person stranger or friend.

 

It was warm in the attic, and as I lay quietly listening to the sounds of the house falling asleep and repeating a Hail Mary over and over in my thoughts, I drifted into the time of dreams. Once I had told my mother about my dreams, and she said they were visions from God and she was happy, because her own dream was that I should grow up and become a priest. After that I did not tell her about my dreams, and they remained in me forever and ever . ....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Classics
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0143137220
• ISBN 13: 9780143137221
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland