Bless Me Ultima Essay

In his book, “Bless Me, Ultima”, author Rudolfo Anaya documents through a fictional novel, the life experiences of a child, Antonio, who is deeply conflicted by his cultural and religious identity, he describes the struggles, the tragedies, and the dilemmas that this young boy has to endure and witness throughout his life. The book takes place in different cities throughout New Mexico. Divided into 22 different chapters the author records the predicaments that Antonio experiments as he struggles to find his moral independence. Rudolfo Anaya supports his text with very detailed stories that bring the characters to life for the reader. For the purpose of this book review, the reader will discuss how a conflicted boy in search for his true identity
This book is capable of influencing individuals to become who they wish to be and not what others expect of them. We all have a collective struggle, when we are reading literature. The author should be commended for his ability to write such a beautiful piece of literature during such hard times. Rudolf Anaya was able to capture the full essence of a moral identity crisis and help the readers better understand their own meaning in life. A weakness in the book is that there is not a glossary to translate the slang Spanish words, and overall Spanish words for the non-Spanish speakers. I believe it is important that readers could refer to the same book to be able to find out what a specific word means. Instead readers are left with the task of going to look for an external source to define specific words. We have “Jesus, María y José” for example, that is a slang expression for a moment of