I felt something behind me and I turned and there is this old woman dressed in black and she asked me what I am doing. ‘Well, I’m trying to write abo… - Rudolfo Anaya

I think that my early novels certainly contained a great deal of autobiographical material, and drawing in of characters from my childhood. I identify in Bless Me Ultima with Antonio, in Heart of Atzlan with Jason, in Tortuga with Tortuga. I had been in a hospital like Tortuga. I had been in the body cast, I had become the Turtleman and I had to work my way back to being a man. All of that material is autobiographical. By the time I write Alburquerque, I am identifying with Ben Chávez, the writer and narrator of the story. But even in my current work, I identify with Sonny Baca, the private investigator in Zia Summer. It's a profession that l've never been in, that I know very little about, but he's still...Let me put it this way, writing is a way for a writer to give his personal "joumey through life" to the character. And so the character reflects the author.

My parents, uncles, aunts, they always talked about what they were doing, where they were working, what happened that day. Sooner or later, they’d be telling a story from the old days,” he recalls. “We were very poor, but proud of the hard work that provided what we had.

I remember the birds and the animals and going down to the river with my dog to play…My grandparents and uncles who farmed in Puerto de Luna were so beautiful, I wanted to keep them around, to contain them.