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Praise for the Writing of Rudolfo Anaya
“An extraordinary storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“One of the nation’s foremost Chicano literary artists.” —The Denver Post
“[Anaya’s work] is better called not the new multicultural writing, but the new American writing.” —Newsweek
“One of the best writers in the country.” —El Paso Times
“The godfather and guru of Chicano literature.” —Tony Hillerman, author of The Blessing Way
“Poet of the barrio … the most widely read Mexican-American.” —Newsweek
Alburquerque
Winner of PEN Center West Award for Fiction
“Alburquerque is a rich and tempestuous book, full of love and compassion, the complex and exciting skullduggery of politics, and the age-old quest for roots, identity, family … There is a marvelous tapestry of interwoven myth and magic that guides Anaya’s characters’ sensibilities, and is equally important in defining their feel of place. Above all, in this novel is a deep caring for land culture and for the spiritual well-being of people, environment, landscape.” —John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War: A Novel
“Alburquerque portrays a quest for knowledge.… [It] is a novel about many cultures intersecting at an urban, power- and politics-filled crossroads, represented by a powerful white businessman, whose mother just happens to be a Jew who has hidden her Jewishness … and a boy from the barrio who fathers a child raised in the barrio but who eventually goes on to a triumphant assertion of his cross-cultural self.” —World Literature Today
“Alburquerque fulfills two important functions: it restores the missing R to the name of the city, and it shows off Anaya’s powers as a novelist.” —National Public Radio
“Anaya is at his visionary best in creating magical realist moments that connect people with one another and the earth.” —The Review of Contemporary Fiction
“Anaya’s prowess shows through on every page.… Thumbs up.” —ABQ Arts
Tortuga
Winner of the American Book Award
“A compelling story of a young man who suffers and learns to make peace with who he is, Tortuga has that touch of magic, of fantastical characters, of dreams as real as sunlight, associated with the best of Chicano literature.” —Roundup Magazine
“Tortuga is one those rare works that speaks to the human condition across time and space, and it well-deserves to find a new generation of readers.” —Southwest BookViews
“A highly emotional tale of a young soul who turned from a turtle into a human all in the span of 200 pages.” —Reviewers of Young Adult Literature
My Land Sings
Winner of the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award
“Rich in traditional Mexican and native American folklore. Every story spins its magic effectively.” —Booklist
“Haunting. Compelling twists will keep the pages turning.” —Publishers Weekly
“Anaya champions the reading of a good book or listening to a folktale as an opportunity to insert one’s own experiences into the story and, hence, to nurture the imagination. This appealing volume will add diversity to folklore collections.” —Booklist
“The wide variety of stories demonstrate a mature understanding of life’s trappings and dangers, but retain a healthy sense of humor about the human predicament.” —Kirkus Reviews
Serafina’s Stories
“[Serafina’s] stories are simple but vivid.… There is magic and mystery too.” —Los Angeles Times
“Anaya’s prose offers … purity. [Serafina’s Stories] will restore to all but the most jaded reader a necessary sense of wonder.” —National Public Radio
“Like Serafina, Anaya is a powerful storyteller whose cuentos and other writings are a balm for the soul.” —New Mexico Magazine
“It is not hard to predict that Serafina’s story will be hypnotic and entertain.… With Serafina’s Stories Anaya again reminds us of the importance of maintaining an oral tradition.” —San Antonio Express-News
“Rudolfo Anaya is both a wise man and a gifted storyteller. Serafina’s Stories [is] a series of engaging tales.” —Santa Fe New Mexican
“Anaya’s new book is a spellbinding account of a Native American woman who spins tales to enlighten the Spanish governor into setting her people free. Clearly conceived, Serafina’s Stories contains 12 folk tales that are as absorbing as the main plot.” —El Paso Times
Heart of Aztlan
“In Heart of Aztlan, a prose writer with the soul of poet, and a dedication to his calling that only the greatest artists ever sustain, is on an important track, the right one, the only one.” —La Confluencia
“[Heart of Aztlan gives] a vivid sense of Chicano life since World War II.” —World Literature Today
“Mixed with the Native American legends and Hispanic traditions of this wonderful book are the basic human motivations that touch all cultures. It is a rip-roaring good read.” —Cibola Beacon
Jalamanta
“A parable for our time … We are in deep need of simple truths, of rediscovering our ancient teachings, and Jalamanta may provide that opportunity.” —The Washington Post Book World
Zia Summer
“A compelling thriller … Though satisfying purely as a mystery, the novel sacrifices none of Anaya’s trademark spirituality—a connectedness to the earth and a deep-seated respect for the traditions of a people and a culture.… Read this multicultural novel for its rich language and full-bodied characters. Anaya is one of our greatest storytellers, and Zia Summer is muy caliente!” —Booklist
“[Anaya] continues to shine brightest with his trademark alchemy: blending Spanish, Mexican, and Indian cultures to evoke the distinctively fecund spiritual terrain of his part of the Southwest.” —Publishers Weekly
Rio Grande Fall
“This is a completely entertaining mystery novel, but Anaya offers two parallel lands of enchantment. One is temporal New Mexico; the other is Nuevo Mexicano, a land of santos, milagros, spirits, visions, and even brujas (witches).” —Booklist
Shaman Winter
“Be aware that if you only skate on the surface, you will miss the depth of the story. You have to dive head-first, literally, into the waves of poetic prose to catch a glimpse of the forces that keep our universe together.” —La Voz
“The fast-paced story line of Shaman Winter is fascinating and absolutely eerie as the master paints a vivid picture of the spirituality of another culture.” —Thrilling Detective
Jemez Spring
“Jemez Spring is meant to appeal to readers of conventional mystery novels, but there is nothing conventional about it.… It taps into primal and universal fears and longings but plays them out in a uniquely New Mexican setting. And the master tells his tales with worlds and images so rich and strange that it is almost as if he had invented a language of his own.” —Los Angeles Times
“Jemez Spring again blends the Spanish, Mexican, and Indian cultures that made the three earlier works in the series such good reads. Anaya is at his best when writing about the people of New Mexico, their traditions and their lives and how they clash with the influx of Anglos.” —San Antonio Express-News
“Anaya takes the reader beyond detective fiction.… His mysteries fall into the criminal and the spiritual, which makes them both inspiring and electrifying.” —St. Petersburg Times
“Unique and exciting … Readers thirsty for philosophy and the supernatural will devour this book.” —Daily Camera (Boulder)
/> “Anaya, godfather and guru of Chicano literature, proves he’s just as good in the murder mystery field.” —Tony Hillerman, author of The Blessing Way
Jemez Spring
A Sonny Baca Novel
Rudolfo Anaya
Jemez Spring completes Sonny’s
adventures through the four seasons.
For all the faithful who waited
for the quartet to be done,
this is for you.
An abrazo of love.
Who is worthy to open the book
and to loose the seals thereof?
~ Revelations 5:2 ~
1
Do dogs dream?
Sonny awakened slowly, opening his right eye first, then the left. He stretched like a rubber band until every nerve and muscle twanged. His vertebrae cracked and he relaxed back into the warm blankets.
Beside him, Chica stirred.
Do dogs dream?
That’s the question, Sonny thought. He yawned and looked at the light filtering through the window.
The denizens of the City Future weren’t discussing the depressed economy, terrorism, Iraq, tapping the Rio Grande for water, the silvery minnow, drought and fires, or politics. For weeks now the regulars at Rita’s Cocina had tossed the dog question back and forth. The discussions had grown heated, some arguing yes and others adamantly denying it.
Sonny rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Dead battery.
I dream therefore I am, he thought. In last night’s dream he had only one eye, like Cyclops. A one-eyed man lived in ordinary time, like Polyphemus. Odysseus had blinded the giant and the poor Cyclops ran out of his cave, crying I am blinded! Noman has blinded me! Chingao! Noman has blinded me!
Sonny had taught the Greek myths to his literature classes at Valley High. That seemed ages ago. He always acted out the part, working like hell to get their interest. But the ancient Greek stories were far removed from the memory of the land-locked Chicanos of the valley where the phrase we sail with the tide had never been heard. So he told them the cuentos his grandfather had taught him, incorporating them into New Mexico history. The history of la gente was embedded in the oral tradition, but it had to be mined if one was to know the ways of the ancestors.
The teachers were alchemists, turning raw material into gold, but they had to compete with teenage interests: cars, video games, rap music, after-school jobs, family troubles. And hormones.
“I was a good teacher,” he said to Chica, rubbing the head of his one-eyed dachshund. Raven’s demons had scratched out her left eye. So much loss in that winter-solstice nightmare where Raven killed don Eliseo.
For the past three months Sonny had been reading don Eliseo’s books. He couldn’t sleep, so he read till two or three in the morning, and the more he read the more he understood that ordinary people go through life thinking they see, but what they’re seeing is only the surface of things. The trick was to see beneath observed reality, and for that one needed to develop a new kind of sight.
“The Egyptians painted the all-seeing eye on their temple walls,” he said to Chica. “Horus had one eye cut out by his uncle Seth. Seth had killed Osiris, the Ruler of Eternity, as the ancient Egyptians called him. It was the eye of Horus that restored Osiris to life. A lot of powerful magic there.”
Seth cut Osiris into pieces and threw him in the Nile. Isis and her sister had brought Osiris back to life; that is, they gathered the dismembered body and sewed it together. The first mummy. One thing was missing. His penis. The organ had been thrown into the Nile where a goldfish ate it. Centuries later, a poet Sonny knew wrote that the missing organ had washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande. History belonged to those who wrote its poetry.
So many allusions to sight in the old stories, he thought, and still, most of us go through life half asleep, one-eyed men, tuertos searching for the truth, a purpose, the meaning of life. Somnambulant, we stumble down the road, unto the burning sheets of the malpais. Unconscious. Why?
If you are unconscious you feel less pain, he thought.
Yeah, that’s it, we don’t want to feel the pain. A man can get along with one good eye, lead the ordinary life of Polyphemus, until along comes Odysseus and drives a stake through it.
Bile rose in his mouth. Raven had driven a stake through his heart.
“Maybe I opened a few eyes,” Sonny whispered, thinking nostalgically of his teaching days at Valley High.
But the classroom was confining, so he quit and learned PI work from Manuel López. He liked the independence.
All seemed normal until he moved to La Paz Lane and met don Eliseo. The old man became a mentor. The bond between them grew strong as the old man taught Sonny how to walk in the dream world. The world of the shaman.
Chica shook off her covers, stretched, and yawned.
“You know, don’t you Chica?”
The small dachshund had followed him into that fateful winter-solstice nightmare where she lost her eye.
Did his dream become hers?
I dream therefore I am. People in deep comas continued to dream. Death came when one could no longer dream. But what if, as the Bard asked, the dead also dream? There’s the rub. La vida es un sueño y los sueños sueño son. Life is a dream and on the other side waits another dream. Maybe?
Do dogs dream?
Several weeks ago Sonny was having a drink at Sal’s Bar—actually he was sipping on a Pepsi—and taking a ribbing from some of his North Valley amigos, weekend cowboys who once a month gathered at Sondra’s Magic Acres stable to ride along the river bosque on borrowed horses. Reliving the Old West. Pretending to trail ride. They spent more time downing beers than riding. Chicano male bonding.
Quite innocently, Sonny had said, “My dog dreams.”
The amigos knew Sonny had been depressed lately, but claiming his dog dreamed was too much. An argument ensued, the staunch Catholics in the group protesting against dreaming dogs. After all, a dog cannot recite the Nicene Creed.
“It’s, ‘I believe in God,’ not ‘dog’!” Mike challenged.
Sonny shrugged. What did Mike know? He was from Tucumcari.
“Yeah, d-o-g is not g-o-d,” Vivián, the attorney in the group, added.
Anagram madness. A shouting match broke out between those who agreed that dogs could dream and those who said no. Two off-duty Bernalillo County sheriffs hustled them all out of the bar. The “dogs don’t dream” amigos hadn’t spoken to Sonny since. The innocent comment had taken on serious proportions.
The story was then spread by the barmaid, a woman of philosophical bent who used to teach Shakespeare at the university, an aficionada of Lone Star beer. She told the story to her customers and it spread along the valley like an unchecked virus. Suddenly conversations erupted into arguments, shouting into fisticuffs, and friendships ended.
The debate, which soon became known as the Great Dog Dream Debate, spread into the neighborhoods, into the restaurants, into city hall, into the schools.
An Alameda Elementary School teacher invited Sonny to her class. The students fell in love with Chica, the dreaming dog. The dachshund became the poster dog of the Dogs Dream camp. The following day a group of Dogs Don’t Dream parents boycotted the school, pulling their children from classes. Sonny became persona non grata to a small camp of anti-dog-dream neoconservatives.
In the meantime, scientists at Sandia Laboratories recorded a rise in the decibel rate over the city. A long mantra-like hum had settled over Alburquerque. Zaaaaaaaaaaa uuuuuuuummmm, something akin to a Buddhist chant. In some of the barrios the hum became aaaaala, alaaaatuya, daaaaale chingasoooos.
The hum seeped into homes, inciting family arguments. The city libraries reported a run on dog books, people trying to figure out which came first: the dream or the dog. The police department reported a surge of fender benders. DWI’s rose; so did divorces.
The metaphysical argument invaded classes at the University of New Mexico, where just before spring break the philosophy department
sponsored a symposium. If it were proven that dogs did indeed dream then the entire history of western civilization might have to be rewritten.
It didn’t get that far. Baptist students on campus boycotted the lectures, claiming that, like the Harry Potter books, dogs dreaming were the work of the devil. But what if the dog is baptized, fully submerged? an innocent voice had asked, a sylph sitting at the back of the room, and the debate took on a Reformation frenzy.
Dogs were like women, the fundamentalists argued, meant to serve the master. On this we agree with the Taliban: the man is the head of the household. Then the feminists on campus boycotted the boycott, shoving and pushing broke out at the picket lines, and the university cops had to break up the confrontation.
Recalling the events, Sonny slipped back into that sleep of the just-barely-awake, until a hullabaloo of crows, raucously cawing and crying as they ripped through his garbage can, roused Chica. She tossed off her blanket and, barking furiously, ran through the kitchen and out her dog door to challenge the birds.
Flocks of crows invaded the valley every winter. By day they scavenged in back yards and at the city landfill; by night they roosted in the cottonwoods of the river bosque.
The morning sun had just cleared Sandia Crest, filling the Rio Grande Valley with a golden hue, the same aura that often shines on Jerusalem, a sheen on Temple Mount.
Last night the crescent moon, the Water Carrier moon of the spring equinox, a goddess to lovers of long ago, a bowl moon to New Mexicans, had tipped and spilled its contents, dusting the Sandia Mountain with a thin coat of snow. In the valley the spray had fallen as a holy mist that barely dampened the tired but awakening earth.
Sonny blinked and looked at the east window. He kept the curtains slightly parted so a slice of sunlight landed on his bedroom wall, a crude calendar marking the movement of the seasons, from one solstice to the next.
Just like the sun calendar at Chaco Canyon, don Eliseo once pointed out. Here is the light on December 21, here June 21. In between, sacred space, life unraveling, our days on earth, and in March the spring equinox, time of earth’s renewal. Remember, time on the clock means little. It moves in a line. The time that encircles you is the time that provides a center. The soul is like an antenna, gathering the unity of cosmic time.
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