I thank you for coming.
Thank you for joining us to
celebrate Rudolfo Anaya as timeless
and beautiful novel.
Bless Me Ultima.
Took six years to write this,
his first novel, and two
years to find a publisher before
the book finally came out in 1972.
I first read Bless Me Ultima
in the late seventies when
my Berkeley professor Ishmael Reed,
gave me a copy.
He told me that by then the
novel had sold 80,000 copies
by word of mouth.
Bless Me Ultima has been a perennial
bestseller.
It's, as of now, sold more than
360,000 copies
in English and will no
doubt sell many more copies
with this canonizing Library of
America volume, which
includes the second novel of the
seminal trilogy, Tortuga.
Based on a sanatorium
where Anaya went as a child
in a body cast to recover from
a spinal cord injury.
In it. In this edition, the third
novel of the trilogy, Heart
of Iceland, was replaced
with the stunning 1992 Albuquerque,
which showcases his mature
voice.
Rudolfo Anaya was an incredibly
productive writer with half
a dozen more novels, collections
of short stories, ten books for
children, anthologies, mystery
novels, a collection of poetry,
and several produced plays.
A nice trilogy, and especially
Bless Me Ultima brought Chicano
literature to the world's attention.
The book was translated into 18
languages.
What struck me in the late
seventies, after the explosion of
100 Years of Solitude, published in
English in 1970, and the novels
and stories of Borges and Cortazar
was that Aeneas was a different kind
of not quite realism,
a spiritualism that felt both
Hispanic and indigenous and
definitely local to the
American Southwest.
Characters in our books are Lost
Souls. And I said,
You lead them through.
When you write the story.
Then the book becomes the ritual.
Luis Alberto Rio,
wonderful poet, essayist and
novelist and the editor of this
particular edition, This new
edition, recalls a nietes
during him away from Latin American
magical realism, saying,
Tell your own reality It has
magic enough as your abuela,
your grandmother knew so well.
India was famously generous
to other writers.
He was a prolific blurb writer.
He also helped writers in dire
straits, taking them into his home
for a meal or sometimes a longer
stay.
He maintained a mountain cabin for
retreats, which he lent out.
You read tells a story about doing a
reading with him when it was time
for the book signing a nyah
did not go to the mountain of books
piled up next to your real small
stack.
He went across the yard to a spot
in the sun, pulled his hat down and
fell asleep.
People in a long line to get the
book signed by a neighbor begged
the younger writer to wake him up.
So we went over and and I said,
You do it.
It's time for the younger writer.
Bless Me Ultima won the prestigious
Premio Canto Soul Prize
and became one of the early texts.
It's been translated, continues
to be taught in high school and
college courses
and perhaps the ultimate
honor in many people's minds.
It was also made into a Hollywood
movie in 2013.
But as sometimes happens with the
canonical, it has become
more admired than read.
And we're gathering here tonight to
bring the book back to its original
status of being given from reader to
reader hand to hand.
And here Will we'll hear Anaya
talk a little bit about how he
started the novel and
will we'll see him, but it'll be
interspersed also with a few clips
from the 2013 movie.
Can we show the clip?
In the sixties I started writing
Bless Me Ultima and
I would write.
I was teaching school and I write at
night.
I remember one night
I felt a presence in
the room
and I turned
and I saw this
woman, this old woman standing
by the door,
and she asked me, What are you
doing? And I said, I'm writing a
story.
And she said, You'll never get
it right until you put me in
it.
I said, Who are you?
And she said, Ultima.
And that's how that vision
of the
healer that could and data came to
me and
she filled the novel with
with her soul, with a presence,
with
the history, our history
of Hispanics in New Mexico,
the belief system, the religion,
the the cuentas
that our grandparents told
the folktales.
And there was I.
I put her in the novel and
her relationship to Antonio.
Becomes crucial.
She becomes the mentor, the guide
that can take Antonio into a
new ways of thinking into the
natural world.
She teaches him.
The river speaks.
The river has a soul.
She teaches him about herbs, about
how to be careful when you
gather the herbs for
the healing. And this relationship,
uh, she becomes
Antonio's mentor, his guide,
and.
People, I think, are
yearning for that.
They want to see that.
We have too many books
and too many movies where it's just
all I
call it, explosions and truck
wrecks and these fantastic
fires and what have you.
And people yearn for a more
basic
story.
And in Bless Me Ultima,
it's the relationship of the Boy
and Ultima.
Thank you.
I'm joined tonight by three
extraordinary writers, by any
measure who all
are Latino, descendants of a near
and in the broadest way.
First, my colleague Justin Torres,
author of the astonishing first
novel, We the Animals, the winner of
many prizes.
The book has won many prizes, and
it's now also a beautiful film.
Who's next? Amazing novel and
been fortunate to have read it.
Blackouts will appear this fall.
It's really an extraordinary
piece of literature.
Manuel Muñoz, the author
of What You See in the Dark and
three collections of short stories,
The Faithful of Olive Avenue, Zigzag
and the Consequences.
And also just as of just
in the last two days, has won two
major prizes, both the Aspen
first of the Aspen Voice Prize
and also the Joyce Carol
Oates Prize.
Alejandro Varela, the
author of the terrific first novel,
The Town of Babylon, was
deservedly a finalist
for the National Book Award.
And what we're going to do is we're
each going to read a tiny little bit
from Bless Me Ultima, then
our guests from far away,
Manuel and Alejandro,
will also read a bit of their own
work, which may have
may have some connection to the
novel.
But we'll start off even before we
read from the book.
We'll hear
a knife himself, read
his first paragraph.
Team came to stay with us this
summer. I was almost seven.
When she came, the beauty of the
piano unfolded before my eyes
and the gurgling waters of the
river, saying 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, Bake Yano,
the Green River Valley and the
blue ball, which was the White
Suns home.
My bare feet felt the throbbing
earth and my body trembled
with excitement.
Time stood still and
shared with me all that had
been and all
that was to come.
Welcome. Justin.
Manuel.
Alejandro.
Just until you start off.
Sure.
Hi, everyone.
Thanks for coming out.
I'm going to read, actually,
oddly, from
Chapter 12,
but I'm picking this
passage because it sets up some
of the dynamics between
the family members
and Antonio,
the main character, his.
For those of you who haven't read it
at his his
father's people are carers the
cowboys and
a long history of that and his
mother's people are farmers
and very rooted to the land.
And a lot of the tension of the book
is it's
Antonio thinking about this
opposition.
So this section I'm going to
read gets to some of that.
Yeah.
Ultima and I continued to
search for plants and roots in the
hills.
I felt more attached to them than to
my own mother Ultima,
and told me stories and legends
of my ancestors.
From her, I learned the glory and
the tragedy of the history of
my people.
And I came to understand how that
history stirred in my blood.
I spent most of the long summer
evenings in her room.
We talked, stored the dried
herbs or played cards.
One night I asked her about the
three dolls on her shelf.
The dolls are made of clay and
shellacked with candle wax.
They were clothed and lifelike
in appearance.
They look familiar.
I thought to myself,
Do not touch them, she said.
There are many things and optimism
that I instinctively knew I should
not touch, that I could not
understand, which is why she was so
blunt about the dolls.
One of them must have been left in
the sun, I said.
I looked closely at the doll that
sagged and bent over.
The cliff. Face seemed to be twisted
with pain.
Come here.
Ultima called me away from the
dolls.
I went and stood before her.
Her clear stare fixed me to the spot
and made me forget the dolls.
Do you know the man, Tenorio?
She asked.
Yes.
He's the man who threatened you at
El Puerto when we went to cure
my Uncle Lucas.
He's a wicked man, she said.
When you're out alone, fishing
along the river, if you see that
man, Antonio, you ought to keep away
from him.
Do you understand?
I understand.
I nodded.
She spoke very calmly, and so I
was not frightened.
You're a good boy.
I come here.
I have something for you.
She took her scapula from around
her neck.
Next spring, you'll start your
catechism and you make your first
communion.
You'll receive your scapular.
It will protect you from all evil.
In the meantime, I want you to wear
mine.
She took the thin string and placed
it around my neck.
I had seen my sister's scapular
and knew that the bit of cloth at
the end had a picture of the Virgin
or Saint Joseph on it.
But the scapular had a small,
flattened pouch.
I smelled it and its fragrance
was sweet.
A small pouch of helpful herbs.
Ultima smiled.
I've had that since I was a child.
It'll keep you safe.
But what will you use?
Ass bar?
She laughed.
I have many ways of keeping me safe.
Now, promise me you'll tell no one
about this.
She took the scapular under my
shirt.
I promise.
I answered.
Another thing I did that summer was
to confirm second story.
I followed the line of water seekers
said was drawn around the town
and it was true the entire
town was surrounded by water.
Of course I did not go to the Hidden
Lakes, but I could see the obvious
truth. Nevertheless,
the town was ringed by the river,
the creek, the lakes
and numerous other springs.
I waited many an afternoon to
catch sight of the beautiful golden
carp as it swam by.
And while I waited in the sun,
I pondered over its legend.
And there were good times to gay
times before the awful storm
that broke over her house.
When the people of last best tourist
came to town for supplies,
they always came to visit with my
parents.
When they came, my father was happy
not only because they were his
people, but because they were a
happy people.
They're always laughing and the
men's eyes were always bright
with the sting of whiskey.
Their talk was loud and excited
and there was some song in it.
They even smelled different from the
people of the town or my uncles
from El Puerto.
My uncles were quiet
and the odor around them was deep
and quiet
like damp earth.
The people from Last of US tourists
were like the wind and the fragrance
they carried on. Their clothing
shifted as the wind shifted.
The people from last stories
always had stories to tell about the
places where they had worked.
Sometimes they talked about picking
cotton in East Texas
and about running whiskey into the
cotton fields of dry counties.
Sometimes they talked about picking
broom corn and as they talked
and laughed, I could see the rows
of green broom corn and I could
smell the sweet scent it
left in their sweaty work clothes.
Or they would speak about the potato
fields of Colorado and the tragedy
that befell them there.
They left a sun in the dark
earth of Colorado, crushed
into the tilled Earth by a spilled
tractor, and then
even the grown men cried.
But it was all right to cry because
it was fitting to grieve the death
of a son.
But always they would return to the
stories of the old days and
less space tourists.
Always the talk turned to life
on the piano.
The first pioneers with there
were sheepherders.
Then they imported herds of cattle
from Mexico and became the taquitos.
They became horsemen.
Covetous men whose
daily life was wrapped up in the
ritual of horsemanship.
They were the first cowboys in that
wild and desolate land
which they took from the Indians.
Then the railroad came.
Then barbed wire came.
The songs, the corridos became
sad.
And the meeting of the people from
Texas with my forefathers was
full of blood, murder
and tragedy.
The people were uprooted.
They looked around one day and found
themselves closed in
the freedom of the land and sky
they had known was gone.
Those people could not live without
freedom.
And so they packed up and moved
west.
They became migrants.
My mother did not like the people of
the Yano to her.
They were worthless drunkards
wanderers.
She's not understand their tragedy,
their search for the freedom that
now was forever gone.
Um.
So you just.
Read a very different.
Comes early in the book.
See, it comes early in the book.
And it's
it's a little more
rugged. And it reminds me a little
bit of
of William Maxwell's.
So long. See you tomorrow where a
child witnesses a crime
here and Tony slips out at
night. Somebody has come to the
house and said that
the man that they they all know
to be unstable since the
war has has shot someone.
So they're looking for him.
I slipped out the kitchen door and
into the night.
It was cool.
I sniffed the air.
There was a tinge of autumn in it.
I ran up the goat path until I
caught sight of two dark shadows
ahead of me.
Chavez and my father.
We passed Theo's dark house
and then the tall juniper tree that
stood where the hills sloped down to
the bridge.
Even from this distance, I could
hear the commotion.
As we neared the bridge, I was
afraid of being discovered as I had
no reason for being there.
My father would be very angry.
To escape detection, I
cut to the right and was swallowed
up by the dark brush of the river.
I pushed through the dense Bosque
until it came to the bank.
From where I stood.
I could look up into the flooding
beams of light that were pointed
down by the excited men.
I could hear them giving frenzied
shout extractions.
I looked to my left where the bridge
started and saw my father and Chavez
running towards the excitement at
the center.
My eyes were now accustomed to the
dark, but it was a glint of light
that made me turn and look
at a clump of bull rushes in
the sweeping water of the river just
a few yards away.
What I saw made my blood run cold.
Crouched in the reeds and half
submerged in the muddy waters.
Lay the figure of Lupita,
the man who had killed the sheriff.
Glint. The glint of light was from
the pistol he held in his hand.
It was frightening enough to come
upon him so suddenly.
But as I dropped to my knees in
fright, I must have uttered a cry
because he turned and looked
directly at me.
At the same moment, a beam of light
found him and illuminated a face,
twisted with madness.
I do not know if you saw me
with the light cut off his vision,
but I saw his bitter, contorted
grin.
As long as I live.
I will never forget those wild eyes
like the eyes of a trapped, savage
animal.
At the same time someone shouted for
the bridge there.
Then all the lights found the
crouched figure.
He jumped and I saw him as clear
as if it were daylight.
Oh, he screamed,
a bloodcurdling cry that echoed down
the river.
The men on the bridge didn't know
what to do.
They stood transfixed, looking down
at the mad men, waving the pistol in
the air.
He cried again.
It was a cry of rage and pain.
The cry of a tormented man had come
to the peaceful green mystery of
the river and the great presence
of the river watched from the
shadows as I watched from
where I crouched at the bank.
Japanese soldier.
Japanese soldier?
He cried. I'm wounded.
Come help me.
He called to the men on the bridge.
The rising mist of the river swirled
in the beams of the spotlights.
Suddenly he leaped up and ran,
splashing through the water towards
me. The lights followed him.
He grew bigger.
I heard his panting, the water,
his feet clipped up, splashed on my
face, and I thought he would run
over me.
Then, as quickly as he did, sprinted
in my direction, he turned and
disappeared again into the dark
clumps of reeds, the river.
The lights moved in all directions,
but they couldn't find him.
Some of the light swept over me and
I trembled with fear that I would be
found out, or worse, that
I would be mistaken for Lupita.
And shot.
The crazy bastard got away.
Someone shouted on the bridge.
The screams sounded again.
It was a cry that I did not
understand.
And I'm sure the men on the bridge
did not either.
The man they hunted had slipped away
from human understanding,
and they were afraid.
Damn, I heard them cursing
themselves.
Then a car with a siren and flashing
red light came on the bridge.
It was vigil.
The state policeman who patrolled
our town.
Chavez is dead.
I heard him shout.
He never had a chance.
His brains blown out.
There was silence.
We have to kill him.
Jason's father shouted.
His voice was full of anger, rage
and desperation.
I have to desperate deputize you?
Virgil started to say The hell with
deputizing.
He killed my brother as the local.
The men agreed with their silence.
Have you spotted him?
Vigil asked.
Just now We saw him, but we lost
him. He's down there, someone
shouted. He's an animal.
He has to be shot.
Now, wait a minute.
It was my father who spoke.
I do not know what he said because
of the shouting.
In the meantime, I searched the dark
of the river for Lupita.
I finally saw him.
He was about 40 feet away, crouched
in the reeds as before
the muddy waters of the river leapt
and Google savagely around
him for the night
had been only cool.
Now it turned cold and I shivered.
I was torn between a fear that made
my body tremble and a desire
to help the poor man.
But I could not move.
I could only watch like a changed
spectator.
Mahrez is right.
I heard a booming voice on the
bridge in the lights.
I could make out the figure of
Narciso.
There was only one man that big
with that voice in town.
I knew that Narciso was one of the
old people from last postures,
and that he was a good friend to my
father.
I knew they often drank together on
Sundays. And once or twice he had
been to our house
for ideas on ways to show that let
us act like men.
That is not an animal down there.
That is a man. Lupita.
You all know Lupita.
You know that the war made him sick.
But the men would not listen to
Narciso.
I guess it was because he was the
tall drunk, and they said he never
did anything useful.
Go back to your drinking and leave
this job to men.
One of them jeered at him.
He killed the sheriff in cold blood.
Another added, I knew that
the sheriff had been greatly
admired.
I am not drinking, as he so
persisted.
It is you men who are drunk for
blood. You have lost your reason.
Reason, Chavez countered.
What reason did he have for killing
my brother?
You know, he addressed men.
My brother did no harm.
Tonight, a mad animal crawled behind
him and took his life.
You call that reason?
That animal has to be destroyed.
See? See?
The men shouted in unison.
At least let us try to talk to him,
Narciso begged.
I knew that it was hard for a man of
the honor to beg.
Yes, Virgil added.
Perhaps he will give himself up.
Do you think he'll listen to talk?
Chavez jumped forward.
He's down there and he still has the
pistol that killed my brother.
Go down and talk to him.
I could see Chavez shouting in
vigils, face and vigil said nothing.
Chavez left.
This is the only talk he will
understand.
He turned and fired over the railing
of the bridge.
His shots roared, then one down
the river.
I could hear the bullets make
splashing noises in the water.
Wait! Narciso shouted.
He took Chavez's rifle and with
one hand, held it up.
Chavez struggled against him, but
Narciso was too big and strong.
I will talk to him, Narciso
said.
He pushed Chavez back.
I understand your sorrow, Chavez,
he said. But killing one is enough
for tonight.
The men must have been impressed by
his sincerity because they stood
back and waited.
Narciso leaned over the concrete
railing and shouted down into the
darkness.
Hey, Lupita, it is me, Narciso.
It is me. Be your compadre.
Listen, my friend.
A very bad business has happened
tonight. But if we act like men, we
can settle it.
Let me come down to talk to you,
Lupita.
Let me help you.
I looked at Lupita, he
had been watching the action on the
bridge, but now as Narciso
talked to him, I saw his head slump
on his chest.
He seemed to be thinking.
I prayed that he would listen to
Narciso and that the angry
and frustrated men on the bridge
would not commit mortal sin.
The night was very quiet.
The men on the bridge waited an
answer.
Only the lapping water made a sound,
amigo.
Narciso shouted, You know
I am your friend.
I want to help you.
He laughed softly.
Hey, Pete, do you remember just
a few years ago before you went to
the war?
Remember the first time you came
into the eight ball to gamble a
little?
Remember how I told you, Juan?
Both the mark, the aces with the
little tobacco juice.
And he thought it was green.
But you beat him.
Those were good times.
The P2 before the war.
Now we have this bad business to
settle. But we are friends who will
help you.
I saw Lupita's tense body shake,
a low sad, mournful
cry toward soap from his throat and
mixed into the lapping sound of the
waters of the river.
His head shook slowly, and I guess
he must have been thinking and
fighting between surrendering,
remaining free and hunted.
Then, like a coiled spring, he
jumped up his pistol, aimed straight
up. There was a flash of fire and
the loud report of the pistol.
But he had not fired at nurses or at
any of the men on the bridge.
The spotlights found him.
There's your answer, Chavez shouted.
He's firing.
Another voice shouted.
He's crazy.
Lupita's pistol sounded again.
Still, he was not aiming at the men
on the bridge.
He was shooting to draw their fire.
Shoot! Shoot!
Someone on the bridge called?
No, no, I whispered through
clenched lips. But it was too late
for anything.
The frightened men responded by
aiming their rifles over the side of
the bridge.
One single shot sounded.
Then a barrage followed it like the
roar of a cannon, like the rumble
of thunder in a summer.
Thunderstorms.
Many shots felled their mark.
I saw Lupita lift off his feet
and hurtled backward by the bullets.
But he got up and ran, limping and
crying towards the bank where I lay.
Bless me, I thought he cried.
And the second volley of shots from
the bridge sounded.
But this time they sounded like a
great whirling of wings.
He fell forward, then called
Plodded, crawled out of the holy
water of the river to the bank
in front of me.
I wanted to reach out and help him,
but I was frozen by my fear.
He looked up at me and his face was
bathed in water, in flowing hot
blood. But it was also dark and
peaceful as it slumped into the
sand, the riverbank.
He made a strange, gurgling sound
in his throat.
Then he was still.
Up on the bridge.
A great shout went up.
The men were already running to come
down and claim the man who's dead.
Hands hung into the soft, wet
sand in front of me.
I turned and ran.
All right.
So little.
Antonio has the weight of
expectations on him from everyone,
but he's also still just
a little child and.
And he wants friends.
And so this is a section that I
think is introduces him
to the ragtag group of kids.
It also highlights some of
India's.
Comic chops.
I don't think he gets enough credit
for how funny, how funny
he can be.
All right.
The church rose up from the dust
of the road.
Huge brown granite blocks rose
skyward to hold the bell tower
in the cross of Christ.
It was the biggest building I had
ever seen in all my life.
Now the people gathered at its doors
like ants, asking questions and
passing on rumors about what
happened last night.
My father went to talk to the men,
but my mother and ultima stood apart
with the women with whom they
exchanged formal greetings.
I went around the side of the church
where I knew the boys from town.
Hung hung around until Mass began.
Most of the kids were older than I.
They were in the second or third
grade at school.
I knew most of them by name, not
because I talked to them, but
because after many Sundays
of observing them, I had learned
who they were and a little bit about
their characteristics.
I knew that when I went to school in
the fall, I would get to know them
well. I was only sad because they
would be a year ahead of me and I
already felt close to them.
My old man, Snoopy, to do it.
Ernie pointed his thumb in Ivan's
face. I knew Ernie liked to brag.
Bullshit.
Horse cried out.
They called him. They called him
Horst because his face looked like
the face of a horse.
And he was always stomping at the
ground. Chicken, Gather the bastard.
Never had a chance.
Paul Bonds exploded like
a pistol.
He grabbed at the top of his head
and toppled on the dust of the
street.
His eyes rolled wildly.
Bonds was even crazier than horse.
I went with the river.
This. I went to the river this
morning, Samuel said softly.
There was blood on the sand.
No one heard him.
I knew he lived across the river
like I did. But he lived upriver
where there were a few houses just
past the railroad bridge.
I'll race you or race you.
The vitamin kid poured nervously at
the ground.
I never knew his real name.
Everyone just called him the vitamin
kid. Even the teachers at school.
He could run. Or how he could run.
Not even bones in high gear or
horse at full gallop could outrun
the vitamin kid.
He was like the wind.
Bullshit Horse cleared his
throat and let fly a frog.
Then Florence cleared his throat and
spit a nice war that beat horses
by five feet at least.
Hey, he beat you.
Damn. He beat you up and laughed.
I was very small, even smaller than
I. And he should never have teased
horse.
If there's one thing horse love to
do. That was to wrestle.
His long arms reached out, caught a
well before he could move away and
flipped him easily into the air.
I well landed hard on the ground,
Gaborone.
He was, he whimpered.
Did he beat me?
Horse asked as he stood over a bell.
No, I will, cried.
He got up slowly, faking a broken
leg. Then he.
Then. Then when he was out of horses
reach. He called.
He beat you. He beat you.
He beat you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah.
My old man was right in the cafe
when that happened, Ernie continued.
Ernie was or Ernie always wanted
to be the center of interest.
He said Lupita just walked in real
slow, walked right up behind the
sheriff who was biting into a piece
of cherry pie, but the pistol to the
back of the sheriff's head and
bullshit horse nade
loudly.
Hey, Florence, top this one again.
He cleared his throat and spit now.
Florence grinned.
He was tall and thin with curly
blond hair that fell to his
shoulders.
I had never seen anyone like him so
white and speaking Spanish.
He reminded me of one of the Golden
Angels heads with wings that hovered
at the feet of the virgin in her
pictures, Cherry pie.
And there were brains and blood all
over the damn place on the table and
the floor, even on the ceiling.
And his eyes were open as he fell.
And before he hit the floor, Lupita
was out the door. Bullshit.
Damn. She can gather.
He'll go to hell, Lloyd said in his
girl's voice.
It's the law that he go to hell for
what he did.
Everybody from those heroes goes to
hell. Florence laughed.
Was Harris was what they called the
neighborhood across the tracks.
And Horace and Bones and William
Florence were from there.
You're going to hell, Florence,
because you don't believe in God or
shout in battle.
O'Hara's are tough bones gurgled.
He wiped his thumbs on his nose and
green snot dangled their
damn shingles.
Come on, Florence, let's wrestle,
Horse said.
He was still angry about the
spitting contest.
You can't wrestle before mass.
It's a sin like cut in
bullshit, Horse said.
And he turned to pounce on Lloyd.
But as he did, he saw me for the
first time.
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he called me.
Hey, kid, come here.
They watched me with interest as I
walked towards the horse.
I did not want to wrestle with a
horse. He was tougher and bigger
than I. But my father had often said
that the man of the Yano does not
run from a fight.
Who's that?
Don't know. Jingle.
The horse reached for my neck, but I
knew about his favorite trick
and ducked.
I went low and came up yanking at
his left leg with a hard pull.
I flipped the horse on his back
eagerly.
Hello, Eka.
Do you see that? The kid threw the
horse.
Everyone laughed at the horse in the
dust.
He got up slowly, his wild
eyes never leaving me.
He wiped the seat of his pants and
came towards me.
I braced myself and stood my ground.
I knew I was in for a whipping.
The horse came to me very slowly
until his face was close to mine.
His dark, wild eyes held me
hypnotically and I could hear the
deep sound a horse makes inside his
chest when he's ready to buck
saliva curled around the edges of
his mouth and spittle threads hung
down and glisten like spider threads
in the sun.
He chomped his teeth and I could
smell his bad breath.
I thought the horse was going to
rear up and porn stopped me into the
ground.
And I guess the other kids did too,
because they were very quiet.
But instead of attacking me, the
horse let out a wild, shocking cry
that sent me reeling backward.
He bred the little runt
actually threw me. He threw me.
He laughed.
What's your name, kid?
The other kids.
The other kids breathe easier.
The horse is not going to commit
murder.
Anthony Maras.
I replied. Antonio.
Juan Martin Luna.
I added in respect to my mother.
Damn Ginger.
Hey, you, Andrew's brother?
Horse asked.
I nodded. Yes.
Well, put it there.
I shook my head. No.
I knew that horse couldn't resist
throwing anyone who held out his
hand.
It was. It was just his nature.
Smart kid.
Bones laughed.
Shut up, cause glared at him.
Okay, kid.
I mean, Anthony, you're a smart kid.
The last guy that threw me was a big
fifth grader. You hear?
I didn't mean to.
I said.
Everyone laughed.
I know you didn't or smiled.
And you're too small to fight.
That's why I'm going to let you get
away with it.
But don't think you can do it again.
Understand?
The message was as much for me as
for the rest of the gang, because we
all nodded.
They all gathered around me and
asked me where I lived in about
school.
They were good friends, even though
they sometimes said bad words.
And that day I became a part of
their gang.
Annabel, who had been pissing
against the church wall, called
out. The mass was starting, and we
all rushed to get to the premium
pews at the very back of the church.
When I said thank you for letting me
be here.
Chapter four Quatro.
I'm the sentimentalist, so I love
the moment when Ultimo goes out
with Antonio to show him
how to pick all the good
things of the land.
There is a time in the last few days
of summer when the brightness
of autumn fills the air in time
is quiet and mellow.
I lived at that time fully.
Strangely aware of a new world
opening up and taking shape
for me in the mornings
before it was too hot.
Ultima and I walked
in the hills of the unknown,
gathering the wild herbs and roots
for her medicines.
We roamed the entire countryside
and up and down the river.
I carried a small shovel with which
to dig, and she carried a gunny sack
for which to gather our magic
harvest.
I She would cry when she spotted a
plant or root.
She needed what luck we are
in today to find their model Manzo.
Then she would lead me to the plant.
Her eyes had found and asked
me to observe where the plant grew
and how its leaves looked,
not touch it.
She would say the leaves
were smooth and light green.
For Ultima.
Even the plants had a spirit.
And before I dug, she made me speak
to the plant and tell it why
we pulled it from its home in the
earth.
You that grow well
here in the arroyo by the dampness
of the river.
We lift you to make
good medicine.
Ultima in tone softly, and
I found myself repeating
after her.
Then I would carefully dig out the
plant, taking care not
to let the steel of the shovel touch
the tender roots of
all the plants we gathered.
None was endowed with so much magic
as they are rather than mine.
So it could cure burned
stores, piles, colic
and babies, bleeding, dysentery, and
even rheumatism.
I knew this plant from long ago
because my mother, who was surely
not a good one, that often used
it.
Ultimate soft hands would carefully
lift the plant and examine it.
She would take a pinch and taste
its qualities.
Then she took the same pinch and put
it into a little black bag tied
to a sash around her waist.
She told me that the dry contents
of the bag contained a pinch of
every plant she had ever gathered
since she began her training as a
kid. And there are many years ago.
Long ago.
She would smile long before you
were a dream, long
before the train came to La Paz told
us before the lunas came
to the valley, before the great
Coronado built his bridge.
And her voice would trail off and my
thoughts would be lost in the
labyrinth of time and history.
I did not know.
We wandered on and found some
oregano and we gathered
plenty because it was not only a
cure for coughs and fever, but a
spice my mother used for
beans and meat.
We were also lucky to find some
Mozart because this plant
grows better in the mountains.
It is like Lake Arrowhead in Manzo,
a cure for everything and cures,
coughs, colds, cuts
and bruises, rheumatism and stomach
troubles. And my father once said
that the old shepherds used it to
keep poisonous snakes away from
their bed rolls by sprinkling
them with a sharp powder.
This with the mixture of ocean that
ultima washed my face
in and arms and feet.
The night Lupita was killed.
In the hills.
Ultima was happy.
There was a nobility to her work
that lent a grace to the small
figure.
I watched her carefully and imitated
her walk, and when I did, I
found that I was no longer lost in
the enormous landscape of hills and
sky.
I was a very important part of the
teeming life of the, youknow, in the
river.
Mira Guess where the tunas
ultima cried with joy and pointed
to the ripe red, prickly pears
of the noble run and
gather some and will eat them
in the shade of the river.
I ran to the cactus and gathered a
shovel full of the succulent seed
pairs.
Then we sat in the shade of the
alamo's over the river and
peeled the two nuns very carefully,
because even on their skin they have
spots that make your fingers
and tongue itch.
We sat and ate and felt refreshed.
The river was silent and brooding.
The presence was watching
over us.
I wondered about Lupita's Lupita's
so.
It's almost time to go to my uncle's
farms in Alberta and gather the
harvest. I said.
I will demand audit and look
to the south.
Do you know my uncles?
The loonies?
I asked.
Of course, child, she replied.
Your grandfather and I are old
friends.
I know his sons.
I lived in Alberta many years ago.
Ultima. I asked, Why
are they so strange and quiet?
And why am I father's people so loud
and wild?
She answered.
It's the blood of the loners to be
quiet for only
a quiet man can learn the secrets
of the earth that are necessary for
planting.
They are quiet like the moon.
And it is the blood of the marriage
to be wild like the ocean from which
they take their name in the spaces
of the piano that have become their
home.
I waited and said,
Now we have come to live here near
the river and yet near the piano.
I love them both.
And yet I am of neither.
I wonder which life I will choose.
I hit or she chuckled to not
trouble yourself with these
thoughts.
You have plenty of time
to find yourself.
But I am growing, I said.
Every day I grow older.
True, she replied softly.
She understood that
as I grew, I would have to choose to
be my mother's priest
or my father's son.
We were silent for a long time, lost
in memories at the murmur of the
morning wind carried across the
treetops.
Cotton from the trees drifted lazily
in the heavy air.
The silence spoke not with harsh
sounds, but softly to
the rhythm of my blood.
What is it I asked for?
I was still afraid.
Is the presence
of the river?
Well, the mindset.
I held my breath and looked at the
giant gnarled cottonwood trees
that surrounded us.
Somewhere a bird cried and up
on the hill, the tinkling sound
of a cow bell rang.
The presence was immense,
lifeless, yet throbbing
with a secret message.
Can I speak?
I asked Andrew closer to Ultima.
If you listen carefully, she
whispered.
Can you speak to it?
I asked. To the whirling, haunting
sound touched us.
I am my child.
It must mount and touch my head.
You want to know so much.
And the presence was gone.
Come. It's time to start homeward.
She rose in with a sack
over her shoulder, hobbled up the
hill I followed.
I knew that if she did not answer my
question, that that part of life was
not yet ready to reveal itself to
me. But I was no longer afraid
of the presence of the river.
We circled homeward.
On the way back, we found some
Manzanilla ultimate
told me that when my brother Leon
was born, that his Moira was sunken
in and that she had cured him with
Manzanilla.
She spoke to me of the common herbs
and medicines we shared with the
Indians. With Rio del Norte.
She spoke of the ancient medicines
of other tribes, the Aztecs, Mayas,
and even those in the old old
country, the Moors.
But I did not listen.
I was thinking of my brothers, Leon
and Andrew and Eugene.
When we arrived home, we put the
plants on the roof of the chicken
shed to dry in the white sun.
I placed small rocks on them
so the wind wouldn't blow them away.
There were some plants that Ultima
could not obtain on the island or
the river, but many people came to
seek cures from her
and they brought in exchange other
herbs and roots.
Especially prized were those plants
that were from the mountains.
When we had finished, we went in
to eat.
The hot beans flavored with Chico's
and green chili were moist
and.
I was so hungry I
ate three whole tortillas.
Thank you.
So what do we say about this?
This this book?
Where does it.
It's now
it's a little more than 50 years
old. I think it's about 51
years since it was published, which
means it's probably 53 years
or something since he finished
writing it.
You know, I was just listening
to the two.
The passages that you three spoke.
And it struck me that they all
touch on the and
the Peters death and the murder of
the pedo and.
And I was just thinking about what
it just fantastic opening
to the book that is because
the Peter the Peter two is in
the early pages and he
what he does is he's war
wounded.
It's it's the book is that in 1944
he's come back from the war and he's
shell shocked and
he walks up to the sheriff and
shoots in the back of the head for
no apparent reason.
And then he himself is hunted down
and killed and.
To talk about destabilization
in the continent.
We know mental illness to talk
about, you know,
something happening within
patriarchy as well, right?
Like that. Like that.
This this figure of authority
is just decapitated
right at the beginning of the novel.
And it has to do with the war.
It has to do with the pressures that
are happening. And then we'll see
this echoes of this with the
brothers and and they're returning
from the war as well.
I just it just occurred to me as
we're sitting here, just what a
fantastic metaphor it
is, but it's not deliberately laid
out very explicitly.
It was interesting, too, that in
almost each passage, the coming of
the railroad was was a big deal,
too. So, I mean, the modernity
and the war, these these
great changing forces that.
But it there,
it's both this massive event to
start a book with this, you know,
with this murder, but then double
murder. Really?
Yeah.
But it's also a foreshadowing
because there's another murder and
another murder and another murder.
And it's a theme, you know, that
keeps going back. And I think.
It's hard not to see that in light
of this sort of imperialism
that's happening on the other.
You know, that's sort of they're in
the shadows, the way the war is
affecting people, the testing of
the bond that they allude to, and
then just the constant tension, the
imperialism that is happening
internally in a lot of these
characters, the tension between
indigenous and European, and it's
just always there.
And so I think and Antonio
is is he's
our hero because he's the one that
sort of like, No, I'm not going to
let go. You know, I'm going to hold
on to my roots. And Ultima is that
conduit for him, you know, the
source of strength to try and hold
on.
You know all the more remarkable
because the the point of view of
a child or to tell the story
through the point of view of a child
with very, very difficult questions
of placement, displacement,
what do I believe?
What do I not believe?
How do I watch the people around me
reject different kinds of ideas or
embrace them?
Is is a pretty radical,
I think, point of view
use. We were just talking about this
with students before we got
here, and I told the students
in the audience that one of the
things I'm very afraid of
doing or very nervous about is
writing in first person.
And to do so with a with
a narrator of this age is
really remarkable, I think.
And the world view he arrives, that
is is one of oneness.
He's like this child
with magical child.
And he's looking at
these indigenous traditions and the
Roman Catholic traditions, and he's
looking at all these kind of
binary oppositions and and
he's just he wants it all.
He wants it all to be together.
He wants this kind of oneness.
And this is this is kind of this
idea of Mr. Takei and the Chicano
movement and like what comes out of
mixing cultures and and
but it's just it's it doesn't really
beautifully I think yeah,
yeah.
This is long really, really
sophisticated but completely
credible in the words of kids
argument about whether God exists.
And if God there's a kid
who the kid I think the
blond kid who speaks Spanish, we
don't know a whole lot more about
him, but we know that he his
parents were killed when he was
young. His sisters are whores in the
whorehouse and he's orphaned
and he's an atheist.
So he makes this argument that why
would this have why why would a God
make this happen? It goes it goes on
for quite a long time.
It's both funny and raucous
and yet philosophically
astute.
And and it's all with these
kids. It's kind of wonderful.
And then something happens to that
kid. I always think that.
I always think that sometimes a
great writer can be
can be measured by the quality of
their very minor characters.
And he has some very minor
characters who all like, like,
you know, the libido
or for that matter, nasty.
So the two men in, in,
in, you know, in the
initial murder,
somebody mad we just
see a tiny bit and
yet.
It's it's very he's very
memorable and sort of Hong or.
Even the three evil daughters.
Yes.
Who you never actually see
but are talked about quite a bit.
Well, in their presence.
Go ahead.
I was going to say that I it's
funny, we talked about this earlier
a little.
I should I'm curious how many people
have read Bless Me Ultima.
Okay, good. Number of you are
the.
There are women in the book.
There are girls in the book, but
they're not particularly well.
They're not drawn out very well.
You know, those the sisters are
there.
They're not deeply characterized.
No. And even brothers are so vivid.
Right. Even Ultima is the typical
oracle, You know,
I mean, I think she's she's a
wonderful character, but he really
doesn't develop.
The sisters are sort of they're just
sort of as a set piece to
appear. The mother frets often
the father broods, but he has a bit
more complication to him.
But yeah.
Yeah, the mothers, the mothers
and the mothers, it's it's
little is made of how the mother is
so tied to ultimate.
The ultimate, though she also
was from Les Foster, so
she was also from the piano.
That was a mystery to me, you know.
I didn't want anything to do with
the book. By the way, when it
when I was I didn't hear about it
until college. And a friend of mine
from Albuquerque,
she said, Have you ever read this?
And I said, No.
She said. You have to.
It's just important.
It's really important. You have to
read this book.
And.
It was a white woman telling me that
I had this is like an important part
of my culture that I needed to know
about. And so immediately I was
like, Yeah, right.
So I was like, my friend Sam.
We took a salsa class and he was
always like, Did you dance salsa?
You don't dance salsa.
I'm okay, Sam.
But.
But he went, Yeah, but she gave me
the book and I totally rejected
it. I didn't want anything to do
with it. I part of me was like,
Well, if it's this accepted
mainstream, then it must be this
palatable version of like our
culture, quote unquote, our right,
and something that I couldn't enjoy.
I would never be any good.
And so I picked it up and I tried
to give it a chance, but I really
didn't get into it. And I think that
had something to do or in
large part to do with some self-hate
going on there.
Like, I was in this, I was at
a university and I was trying to,
you know, read the really important
works and the what is what is this?
She's and
and I read it recently actually in
preparation for this.
And I, I loved it.
I loved it. And I can't believe how
much I would have gotten out of it
if it had been taught to me in
school and identified so much with
Antonio. All of the contradictions,
all of the questions of faith,
although his questions of faith are
really quite pure, you know, and
sweet. And mine were just like, How
can Jesus be blood?
And, you know,
you know, in school I would get that
question wrong if I went to Catholic
school until until college.
And I always get that question
wrong. It just didn't make sense to
me scientifically.
That was my hang up.
But his was just like, Why do people
suffer?
Yeah, but yeah, I
mean, I it's it's a
it's a very important book that took
a long time. But I love that
the reasons that I put off that book
are very much the tensions that he
explores in the book, the
push and pull of like Old World and
New world of trying to fit in.
And he gets to the school and then
suddenly he feels like the outsider
and everything he does all of his
allegiances to to ultimate make
him an outsider.
And it's hard not to see that as him
trying to hold on to what is
of the indigenous culture
and to keep the
sort of colonialism and imperialism
at bay.
We're still doing that.
Apparently.
I first encountered this novel
in 97 in graduate
school. 95 or 97, somewhere
around there.
My advisor was the Chicano novelist,
the East L.A. novelist, L.A.
Maria Viramontes.
And when I first went to her office
and she was trying to get a gauge on
what I had read, was
appalled by what I had not
read.
And I did my undergraduate
at Harvard, and she couldn't believe
that I hadn't read anything
basically past the 19th century.
And so, you know, as she famously
said, Manuel, what do they do to
you? What do they do to you?
And she wrote down a list of books,
including including
a nice book and many others.
But her
point in doing so is to say, look,
someone should read as many of these
as you can.
There might be some of these here
that is statically or artistically
may not
be in tune with what you think
you want to do on the page.
But I think it is very important for
you to know what your lineages
and to know what has come
before and what kind of
doors have been opened
over time in terms of the kinds of
literature that has come through.
And she taught me a whole lot about
the history of small presses,
the presses that support these kinds
of voices and these kinds of
stories.
So there's, I think, some more
to say, too, about
the first encounter I had with it
and then rereading it also recently
for
for this for this panel.
And really, as I said before, the
thing that struck me most was
just how much you put into
the the giving
voice to a child, which I think is a
very, very powerful thing to do.
There's a lot more to say about this
book. I mean, the least of which
is it's it's
regularly appeared on the book
banning lists.
You know, it's been it's been taken
out of libraries in 2008 2013.
But.
I'm more interested in hearing
each of you now read a little bit
from your new work.
Not Justin, because Justin has a new
book in Fall. It will be celebrating
that. But I'm hoping you two
will each read a little bit from
your work.
I'm going to read up there.
And you're reading from a new story,
from a story from your new book.
Retreat from Babylon.
Okay, great.
And.
Hello? Oh, yeah.
Okay. So for those of you who don't
know Babylon, it's
about a public health
professor who lives in the city,
returns to the suburbs to take care
of a sick parent.
And it's
a suburb that he really
never wants to return to and only
does so for his family.
And while he's there,
he it turns out
to be his 20th high school reunion.
And in a moment of
weakness, or because he's just
annoyed with his parents, he's like,
I'm going to go. And he hasn't seen
anyone in 20 years.
And the book is about him rekindling
relationships with his first love,
his best friend, his worst enemy,
and the ghost of his brother.
And so he's also
outrunning a marriage that's having
some problems.
And in this section, I'm going to
read near the end.
There are no spoilers here.
He recounts a kind
of complicated encounter that he had
at the very beginning of his
relationship. His partner
is black,
Dominican.
He's mestizo like me.
And he
sticks his foot in his mouth and
then wonders why.
And I have to find the page.
Okay, you know what? We're just
going to read it from your.
After that day, Marco stopped
calling and messaging me with the
same élan.
He wasn't rude, but he wasn't
interested anymore.
He was kind enough to wait for me to
get the hint instead of dumping me
outright.
That encounter stayed with me for a
long time.
I couldn't understand why I held on
to such archaic notions.
Why had I allowed a few superficial
markers to determine how
I would interact with others?
I dated white men before Marco.
I contended with their assumptions
and discomforts, and yet somehow
I had cast myself in the role of the
white guy.
In brief, I had fallen prey
to the Latinxs hierarchy.
A lens, really a racist
lens with tears and a color gradient
at the top. Unsurprisingly, sit
European Latin access white
tinos irrespective
of nationality or ethnicity.
This layer includes most of Buenos
Aires and most of the upper castes
of all Latin American countries.
Diego Maradona is the sole occupant
of the next tier next
or the desire that leaned more
European than indigenous.
Excluding anyone with visible
African diaspora ancestry,
below them are the most desired that
lean more indigenous than European.
Still, excluding black Latina is of
all kind.
Each of these tiers is then
stratified but stratified by
nationality, beginning
with white Argentines who don't live
in the capital. Chileans who disdain
Argentines followed by non
coastal Colombians.
Despite how large El Costanzo
Gabriel Gris Gabriel Garcia marquez
looms globally.
Next, the Mexican actor Cantinflas
and other South Americans
Peruvians of Japanese descent follow
the subsequent tiers occupied by
Central Americans, again stratified
by genotype, but still not inclusive
of black people.
Below them is the trifecta Puerto
Ricans, the Mexicans who haven't
won Oscars, and Dominicans,
all of whom, not coincidentally,
have some of the longest, most
oppressive histories of the United
States.
The penultimate tier includes
indigenous people without African
ancestry who are labeled India's
as per the ignorance of 15th century
imperialists.
Last are all the permutations of the
African diaspora, Black, indigenous,
black, Latina, Afro.
This Indian, this Moreno's
inheritors Creoles and Maroons
miskito racially Garifuna
countries with plurality of or
majority black populations like
Belize, Panama, Guyana,
Suriname, French Guiana, Haiti,
Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica,
and all heretofore unmentioned
Caribbean nations.
This tier, too, is subject to
discrimination based on hue
and shade.
Cubans are their own category
and merit a secondary analysis.
After all, their revolution
continues.
They somehow stood up to the empire
and have thus far survived,
giving them an almost magical
status.
In any case, no amount of
post-breakup social mapping reunited
Marco and me.
Thank you once again for being with
us tonight.
I'm going to read a little bit just
to start from a story called
Field Work.
I was born and raised in the Central
Valley from the Fresno area.
I hope that there's some valley
road. Thank you.
I saw that. I saw.
I saw it.
And there's always the assumption
that, you know, what we write about
is really our lives.
And this is the closest I've gotten
to memoir, but it's not
memoir.
My father had a stroke about five
years ago, seven years ago.
And listening to him as he was
recovering, telling me stories that
I had never heard before,
created a really strange
and new dynamic between
us and just a little bit of what
that is. Fieldwork.
When I was younger, I dreamed aloud
about leaving the valley,
and my mother's question was always
To do what?
She has it in Spanish, of course.
And the single answer, the only
answer I could have dared was
trabajo.
Work demanded everything.
In my family,
my mother had come to the valley
from Texas when she was very young
because of work.
Her older sister had gone ahead of
her for the same reason, though.
My mother later told me that my Theo
was all talk, though she never
worked a day in her life.
Her brothers, my deals, hunched
everywhere in the fields, no matter
the season.
The valley was all about work if you
wanted it. In Fresno was a city big
enough for anyone.
My best friend told me that his
family, like mine, had come
to the Fresno area because of the
field work to
his father and his mother drove
a truck from town to town looking
for crops to pick.
And they lived like that until the
truck broke down on Highway 99
outside of Selma.
They had no money to fix the truck,
so they settled there.
My best friend doesn't know if this
story is entirely true or not,
but I can easily picture his
father's cigaret in hand
standing at the side of the highway
and wasting no time making a
decision.
His father, like mine, is pragmatic
with little patience for dreaming.
His father, like mine, had come up
from Mexico, the poorest of
the poor.
Just as many Mexican fathers had
come before them.
And here was my father.
Now, still not dreaming,
but sleeping deeply in the
fluorescent dullness of a county
rehab center recovering
from a stroke, and me
out of work tasked
by my mother to look after him.
We'd been alternating overnights
at the rehab center, my mother and I
sleeping in my father's room and
then switching off after the morning
meal.
This vigilance was completely
unnecessary, I thought, but my
mother had a fear that the nurse
would be English only.
They're trained for this, I told her
in Spanish, embarrassed by her
constant presence.
But near the end of the first few
weeks with him, I witnessed his
alarm when a nurse awakened
him in the middle of the night for
medications and a blood withdrawal.
His disorientation was so
strong that it could
only have translated into pain.
He struggled to rise from the bed as
if he sensed he was being kept in
the room against his will.
And the English speaking nurse had
no words to calm him.
Tranquilo.
I kept saying to him, but my voice
was nothing he recognized.
He seized against both of us for a
good long time before the nurse
tapped the call button and someone
came in to assist, drawing
the curtain around the bed and
leaving me to listen to him, whimper
quietly back into sleep.
After that, I stayed awake
all through the unsettling
quiet of the dark hours,
the hallways. So still I was
convinced that the night nurses had
left their posts.
I leaned back in the uncomfortable
armchair and stared up at the
ceiling.
Wondered if my father would discern
that his road would
end here in a county
rehab center in the valley.
In the valley, thousands
of miles from where he was born.
Dawn had hardly cracked when
a nurse came in to check on my
father.
I didn't recognize her, but she
regarded me with a steady, unfazed
look that reminded me of the flat
disinterest in the voices,
constantly asking my father for
his full name.
The day of the week, the month,
his birthday, if it rained
yesterday.
And who are you?
The nurse asked me.
Hardly rousing my father.
I'm his son, I answered.
But the word didn't seem to be
enough for her.
I thought I heard a certainty
in her voice, as if she had already
knew my story.
She must have been coming in on the
previous nights when I actually had
been asleep and wondered
about me slumped in the armchair.
What did she want to hear?
I could have told her anything, I
realized.
True or not, my father
brought over there. And me, his son,
born over here.
And yet here we were in
a county rehab center.
Would it matter more if I said I was
a substitute teacher?
The youngest brother.
The one who never gone to jail.
A field worker at one time.
What did it matter
if I told her I had kids of my own
or no kids at all?
I'm his son.
And it repeated maybe too
sharply.
I didn't mean anything by it, said
the nurse.
She turned her full attention to my
father, who has stayed awake
and checked his vitals.
Good morning, she said to him.
She smiled. Now genuine
and encourage my father to sit up in
bed.
My mother is usually here
with him for breakfast, I said.
Not you?
She asked.
We alternate.
I told her.
Me and my mother.
It's good of you.
The nurse said.
You know, you don't have to be here
all the time if you need to rest.
Neither does your mother.
It's okay to go home.
If you go to work.
Work?
My father said.
The nurse, like all the others,
encouraged him to speak as much as
possible. You think you should go
back to work?
Yeah. My father said.
Awake now and ready to agree to
anything.
What was your job?
He looked at me, maybe realizing
that his single word English had
reached its limit.
You picked crops, right?
Right, Dad?
Yeah.
He agreed, but with great
hesitation, as if he had to think
about it to be sure.
Really? Remarked the nurse.
She was preparing to draw a vial
of blood from him, and I could tell
that she welcome his distraction.
Just like all the men who had gone
up north in the valley before him.
I thought.
And wired back money from picking
oranges and grapes and peaches.
I rang Hynes. Right, Dad.
When he heard the Spanish, he nodded
and continued, recalling in his own
language.
Cotton and tomatoes, too.
And almonds, my father
added.
And figs and nectarines.
And with so much work apricots,
plums, corn,
pistachios,
the lemon groves over on the eastern
slope of the fat, walnuts
and cauliflower.
Cherries and pears.
He kept remembering things.
Strawberries, hiding in the dirt,
peppercorns, persimmons,
avocado trees and the prettiest
green rose you've ever seen.
Olives and wheat,
a bundled up for the horses and
the cows apples
because the Americanos like their
pie.
You picked all those things?
I asked him.
Yeah? My father said,
nodding his head.
We've run a little long tonight, so
we'll have just a very few minutes
for questions.
But if we have questions,
we also use microphone.
Do you want to raise your hand a
little higher? Could we have a
microphone here for the man
in front in the blue
UCLA sweatshirt?
I saw. I got a question about
Ultima.
So
I'll say right now in Los Angeles,
black and brown is very divided
on every level.
For LAUSD, L.A.,
CCD, the city council
in the streets with the gangs
everywhere. So I would say Ultima
talks about the Aztec, the
Maya, but she also talks
about the Moors when she was talking
about the different medicines.
So what do you think Ultima
has to offer people
today?
The youth to
the adults to.
Oh, geez, everybody does Black
and brown to come together.
Mm hmm.
It seems like a question for you,
Alejandro.
Gosh.
It's a great question.
I mean, I'd love to think of Ultima
as being someone who would be
uniting force, you know, who kind
of stands in both worlds and holds
them together.
But that's a hope.
I don't I don't know.
And I don't know if.
Uh.
Yeah, I don't. I don't know.
I don't have an answer for you.
I don't know if if I would say
that she stands, that
she would play that role.
I'm sorry. I know.
I like the idea, though.
You know, I'm not always sure that
any book or any one character can
be those things.
But I like to think of all of those
books as being a lineage and moving
us toward to the moment that we are
right now.
I was just asked to write an essay
for Gary
Soto's 1977
Elements of San Joaquin.
And so the way that I'm starting to
see these books now,
as Eleanor Viramontes
had sort of instructed me to do
back then, was to see
one book, one moment
in time that is all gathering
and moving forward.
I mean, 1977
elements of San Joaquin made me
start to think.
1981 is in bloom,
Mother. When that comes out and when
we get to those milestone
anniversaries and we start to
celebrate with those individual
books, can mean they may not
answer your specific question,
but it does move us towards
the writers that are writing to the
contemporary moment, whether
that's in fiction or
in poetry or an essay
or in any of the other pieces of
literature that we didn't have
access to, frankly, 50
years ago in terms of publication.
So that's my hope in terms of where
we are.
You know, also.
I think of the divide, the current
divide in our society, where you
spoke of as being really
the accordion being, you know, the
hierarchy, right.
Like when it's collapsed, we're
we're more united.
And that's that's essentially what I
write about in Babylon.
This idea that community is
important above all things, but that
capitalism drives us towards an
individualistic sort of
model.
And ultimate, I guess, in that way
does represent something more
collective.
But yeah, so, so long as
there's a conquer and divide and
strategy in our society that
presents scarcity as kind of the
only option, then it's very easy for
us to turn against each other.
And so, yeah, I don't have,
I don't have because you have it
right, as opposed to like, know who
really has it.
And so, yeah, maybe in that way
Ultima represents something,
something more uniting.
The, the, the accordion at rest as
opposed to stretched out.
The maybe more than ultimate the
character the nature
of reading
novels that are
that require a sort of deep
passage into an interiority
interiority of of one writer
and his whole world
just by its nature encourages
understanding of another
sensibility.
And I think that that's what we need
a lot more of.
Yeah, and thanks for the
question, Malaika.
I think that
she's all about interconnectedness.
You know, the fact that in that
moment she reaches back
to the Moors and she does not forget
the African presence in
in the Spanish conquest.
Right.
She that's that's, that's ultimately
right. And she's always focused on
the interconnectedness.
And she there's a moment in the
story where another family's being
haunted by
ghosts.
And the ghosts are
the ghosts of the native people who
had that land, who were
dispossessed.
And she's the one who understands
their burial rituals, and she's one
who can kind of cleanse that
because she has respect to
to the land that's been stolen.
And I think that.
There's a lot to learn about.
In ultimately about thinking about
the ways in which people have been
set against each other and for what
reasons and by whom.
And though there's not a lot of
upsides that one moment, the more
there's not a lot of black presence.
I mean, it's New Mexico in 1944.
That sense of interconnectedness, I
think, is throughout
the novel permeates the novel.
There's one thing to add, though, I
want to say about the one refrain
that she uses about
any time somebody asks for help
is that it comes with a condition.
As long as I don't get into
it, you don't disrupt the
What is it?
The habits of man?
Yeah, something like that.
And it's an acknowledgment that
there's one way to
do things, but it
is very much an earthbound
way. And she has another way to
to to want to solve
or resolve conflicts is,
if you know, to bring it into the
mode of the question.
So I think that's an important
thing to think about for Whitmire.
Yeah. One more question.
I love this story
of the author and process and
ultimate comes into his
life and changes
the course of his work.
So I'm wondering, you probably
know where this is going.
If someone has come into your life
mid process or
some thing that dramatically changed
the course.
Of a novel or something of a similar
experience.
Good question.
I mean, everything I write
is collage.
I mean, it begins that way.
It seems it's one story, but it's
really five things that I want to
talk about. And then I spend a lot
of time trying
to put them all together.
And some of those things do sort of.
Appear in my life, you know.
I'm trying to think of an example
of.
And yeah, in Babylon.
In the novel, I
wanted to write about a particular
town.
Rosato, Pennsylvania, which was
meaningful to me and in my education
and public health.
And that came at a time when
I was very curious about what, you
know, what
what's going to become of us like,
what is the way back from how far
we've gotten and and
this history of this town that
achieved this in inexplicably
amazing health.
And no one could understand why.
And then the researchers showed up,
and what they realized was that they
were so tightly knit.
There was so, so much intense social
support in the town
that
it was buffering them from like
heart disease and cancer and
all sorts of things.
And they call that the Rosetta
effect in public health when it
comes to heart disease.
And and I said,
I have to do this.
Yeah. So I took that and then took
the story of my own upbringing and
put those things together.
But if that hadn't landed in I mean,
that landed in my lap sort of or I
learned it when I needed to learn it
now.
But nothing, nothing quite
quite like Ultima appearing
in a dream. That date is yet
to happen in my writing process.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I would say my do
my new novel
Black actors are going to come out
in the fall for that book.
I'm very coy about.
It's a lot based on personal
experience, and I'm very coy about
this one, this main character,
this guy Juan, and whether
or not he is a real person or not in
my life.
And in the book, I'm very coy
about it and I'm going to continue
to be now.
But but what I say
is that I take that line from
Voltaire, Right?
That's like, you know, if God didn't
exist to be necessary to make him
up. Right.
I think that if Ultima
didn't exist, right, it was it
was necessary to make her up like
she's.
Sometimes these characters are.
They arrive this way, I think,
because.
We need to believe in something we
need to believe in.
Mean I'll be I'll stay in the
real.
I mean, I mentioned her already,
Alina, but just
to say it one more time.
How important it was for me
as someone who was the son of farm
workers to come under her wing
and get exactly what
is being talked about on the stage,
like, here's my
received wisdom.
You can take it or leave it
or you don't want it.
What's your wisdom then?
And that's precisely the kind of
mentorship and,
you know.
Sensing of of that.
I think Antonio does in the novel.
But I think any of us who worked
with her or any of us who have
worked with good teachers and
mentors have had the
privilege and experience of
of of knowing there's one right
here, at least, who's a good friend
of mine from Cornell who knows
exactly who I'm talking about.
But I'm just glad that I was part of
a generation that
had that privilege
because, you know, they did not
largely.
So it's important to mention that.
So one more question over here.
Is there spaghetti?
That's a great question.
I don't remember any spaghetti
in this book.
Oh, man.
Unfortunately, there's food
and and good sounding food,
but not spaghetti, I don't think.
Do you remember when I ended?
I ended with the meal.
So he ate three whole tortillas.
But literally here, I don't know if
there might be.
There's some little snacks.
There's no spaghetti in my book
either, But I think there is one.
Don't go.
Yeah.
Spaghetti exist, if that was.
Yeah.
Here with the scarf.
Yeah.
Thank you. Also, Bless Me
Ultima the first time in the 1980s,
and it was handed
to me for murder in a western
Colorado newspaper.
There's this good American reporter
who's about how.
This is.
A.
Certain style
genre. It's not.
Necessarily magical realism
in the order of Marcus,
but what would it be called
and what would your genre
be called on?
The more American,
Latino, Chicano,
or whatever style it
is?
Because it's magic, right?
It's beautiful.
But it's not.
Latin Americans so much.
I'm, I,
I don't know how I would categorize
it. And in fact, we,
I mentioned this in the with the
students about my own work.
You know, a devil shows up
there are ghosts.
But those for me in the realm of my
fiction is real.
So I don't know other than.
So what?
Psychological fiction, That's all.
You know, the I think the beautiful
thing about what's happening or what
has happened in the
50 years since India has
come around is the
how just the fiction?
Doesn't sound like anything else.
And that's a beautiful thing.
The three of us do not sound at all
alike.
No, and that's wonderful.
And you saw that. Just you heard
them.
Yeah. So I think, you know, I don't
I'm not sure how I would categorize
it, but, ah, hopefully
to produce the kind of work that
is.
Thank you so much.
And and Manuel
and Alejandro.
I hope just we'll all sign
books questions so they'll
do to to get our mailing
list because in May we'll have
the wonderful writers Sigrid Nunez
will come and read.