One reason that I wrote Bless Me, Ultima was because, to me, the people I grew up with were so beautiful, I didn’t want them to disappear. I knew a b… - Rudolfo Anaya

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 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.

I think the minority cultural groups in this country have to form part of their identity in confrontation with the mainstream culture. We just can't get away from it. The social and political reality, and elements of bigotry, racism and prejudice are there, and we have to deal with them. I think what Bruce-Novoa may have been alluding to is that we, as Chicanos in the 70s creating the artistic Chicano movement, couldn't stay at that place. There were those of us who had to incorporate that dialectic into our work, but then move into all sorts streams. Our literary characters had a lot of other needs, desires, and passion of life to be lived, besides the confrontation with the Anglo-American mainstream culture.”