Rudolfo Anaya: The Essays (review)

This collection of essays penned by Rudolfo Anaya, titled Rudolfo Anaya: The Essays (2009), represents an unprecedented assemblage of important writings in a genre other than the novel (including mysteries), short story, legend, children’s literature, play and anthology for which Anaya is so well known. With an American classic, Bless Me, Ultima (l972), to his credit along with a string of spiritually oriented works grounded in the cultural matrix of New Mexico or a sense of ethics, Anaya displays his versatility and talent by developing the essay as a flexible genre of personal exploration. In six distinct sections, he covers a wide gamut of expressions and literary forms, thus surprising the unsuspecting reader with the depth and range of his meditations and thought. Anaya might not initially stand out as a critic of social-historical concerns, but his essays provide a solid rationale for augmenting and expanding his literary profile. He is without a doubt a keen observer and witness of his times and his surroundings, giving further credence to his literary confabulations by taking time to reflect on specific issues that either parallel his literary production or simply serve to articulate a specific concern.

Most readers of Anaya will now realize that the essay is one of his fortes, as he joins the ranks of outstanding essayists from New Mexico such as Sabine R. Ulibarrí, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Cleofas M. Jaramillo, and Eusebio Chacón. Although many readers regard the essay as the “inferior genre” (Robert Mead, Breve historia del ensayo hispanoamericano [1956]), Anaya develops it as a venue of preliminary research or reflections that frequently will make their way into other creative products. In other words, he probes and examines factual possibilities or discursive potentials that he can then transpose into fictional substance. His essays function much like dialogic monologues where he mediates a variety of topics that are often filtered into the thought processes of characters, dimensions of themes, or background of plots. Other essays answer questions from readers or add to what his works already contain. For example, his treatment of myth is legendary in various works, but his essay “Mythical Dimensions/Political Reality” provides a concrete explanation of the way in which myth has reverberations beyond what most readers consider as a facile mysticism. He posits the intimate relationship between myth and social construction in order to better understand how the two interface. In other essays, as evinced in what he terms “censorship of neglect,” he confronts the ideological pathology of closemindedness through a quixotic sense of freedom. True, his ars poetica often leans toward the poetic, even spiritual and visionary, but clearly he possesses a strong sense of social commitment for the underdog.

Anaya’s essays clarify and qualify philosophical, cultural, and experiential points that mark key touchstones of his unique worldview. His thoughts on the Chicano homeland (Aztlán) and the Southwest, the writer’s sense of place, the epiphany in language, the spirit of place, and the magic of words all constitute original reflections on what an author can contribute. He is a good storyteller, and he poignantly knows how to argue a point of view.