SOURCE: “Interview with Rudolfo Anaya,” in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 68, No. 4, Winter, 1994, pp. 177–87.

[In the following interview, originally conducted in 1992, Anaya discusses the state of Chicano literature in the United States, as well as his own literary aims, cultural concerns, and identity as a Chicano writer.]

This interview was taped on April 7, 1992 in his office at the University of New Mexico. R. S. Sharma teaches in the Department of English, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India.

[Sharma:] Rudy, I am in this country to learn about the writers. You are one of the major voices of Chicano writing and, in fact, one of the pioneers. What exactly is meant by Chicano writing and Chicano literature?

[Anaya:] We are very glad that you can be with us. Welcome to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. [Anaya's recent novel is titled Alburquerque. He insists on using the original spelling of the city, la villa de Alburquerque.] The Chicano movement began in the mid-1960s in California and in the Southwest, and in other places where there were Mexican-American communities. It was designated as the Chicano movement because the Mexican-American community was looking for a word, a label, that would most closely fit our identity—our present identity. And so they took the word Chicano from Mexicano; Me-shi-cano became Chicano. Embodied in that word was a sense of pride, a sense of revolution, a sense that we had to create our own destiny, a sense that we could not leave that destiny in the hands of Anglo-America; we had a history and a heritage and a language to preserve, to be proud of and to study.

That history had not been presented to us in the educational system. For me, Chicano means taking our destiny into our own hands. We are Hispano in the sense that we are a Spanish-speaking group; we are Mestizos in the sense that we are Mexicanos who came up (either recently, or in the last generation, or many years ago) from Mexico. Our ancestors came through Mexico and became part of the Mexican mestizo (a blending of the European with the Native Americans). In my case, my ancestors settled here along the Río Grande and for many centuries learned from, lived with, and intermarried with the Pueblo Indians. So Chicano also meant taking pride in the indigenous Native American roots that are a part of us.

Well, the question of tradition. Which tradition would you like yourself to be associated with? The European tradition, so-called American tradition, or the Spanish tradition in literature? Or would you like to create a tradition of your own?

You said in your lecture last week that India is, in many ways, an eclectic country. That it draws from many traditions and maybe that's its strength. I see myself as an eclectic person. I can draw from many traditions. If we are really to know ourselves, we have to rely on the vast storehouse of humanity, not just one narrow path. As a matter of fact, that's been the problem in this country. In the United States, Anglo-America has insisted on the tradition of one path to follow. (The melting pot, you see.) It doesn't fit. It doesn't work and it creates damage and harm.

You also hit the nail on the head when you said, “Would you like to create a position of your own?” I think that is what the Chicano movement has done. We have looked at our heritage and our history and re-analyzed it to create a Chicano literature. So, for the first time through the publication of books that go out to society and to the world, we created a literature from our own community, from our roots. And in it we are speaking of our identity, our history, our language, the oppression that we have suffered, and we were pointing to the future. The sense of identity is what we would like to see in our community—to revitalize it, to give it pride, and to become, in a sense, this multicultural eclectic group that can draw from many streams of thought.

You have talked about bilingualism. And Chicanismo as a bilingual culture. Now, do you have problems with that? Do you think culture is language specific? If it is language specific which would you prefer, English or Spanish?

One definition of culture is language specific: the language is the soul of the culture and if you lose the language, you lose the soul. I grew up speaking Spanish in a small village here in New Mexico. I spoke Spanish the first six years of my life, until I went to school. I didn't know a word of English. My grandparents and my parents spoke only Spanish, most of my family, most of the neighbors in that small village spoke Spanish. I still retain a great deal of my New Mexican Spanish and I speak it. Chicano youth of today are changing to English. I write now in English, as you know. I think what we can portray of our culture is now in the content of the story, the poem, or the play—in the content we can carry our culture and its values forward, even though the language is English. I would not like to see the Spanish language lost. I think we should preserve it, and I think this country should wake up and realize that being bilingual or multilingual is an asset and teach more language, but at the same time we're struggling with this very real contemporary problem: we have to do our best in English and see if the content will carry forth in that language.

Is the Chicano movement just a cultural movement? Are you just seeking cultural pluralism, or are you also seeking political pluralism? Do you have a politicalism now?

Yes, we have a political agenda; it was especially evident in the early years of the Chicano movement. There were many ideologies that were presented to the Chicano community, ranging from Marxism to cultural nationalism, the myth of Aztlán, for example, and its power to perhaps regenerate and gather the community together again. Wrapped up in those ideologies were the ideals of more representation, better jobs, better health protection for farm workers, and other workers. We sought entry into post-secondary education, and we wanted an education that was relevant to our children in the lower grades. We desperately needed professors and administrators in secondary education and at the university level. All that was part of a very definite political agenda. Part of that political agenda was a parallel stream: the cultural movement. We returned to Mexican music, Mexican art and created Chicano literature, Chicano theater, motion pictures, and one of the most lasting attributes of the Chicano movement, Chicano literature. The Chicanos found their voice and began to publish in small presses, to create from the beginnings in 1965 a few books, and now twenty years later, hundreds of books and a whole new generation of writers, a whole new generation of women writers—Chicanas who are lending their perspective to Chicano literature.

Would you prefer a Chicano existence within the corporate life of the U.S. or would you like to be associated with life in Mexico?

During the early days of the Chicano movement in the early 1970s I was traveling a lot to Mexico, almost every summer, and I was learning the culture and beginning also to speak more and more Spanish. I also studied the history and mythology, because I have made a great deal of use of mythology in my work. I like myth, I like the oral tradition that comes from the people and works its way into the novels. So, I was reflecting on the importance of that indigenous experience, whatever it is about me that is Mexicano. I filled myself up with those experiences, bringing them back with me to New Mexico where I was writing my novels.

My identity right now is tied to the Chicano identity. I can work in the Anglo-American world. I have been a professional teacher, secondary and also in the elementary, and the post-secondary schools at the university level. I can live in that world, I can work in it, I understand it. I could probably, after a very short time, also survive in Mexico, but my reality is here. My reality is in the United States as a person who has a particular history and heritage. Out of that heritage grew an identity that is strong, authentic, and proud. The United States should wake up and realize that those of us who are from different cultural groups want to keep up our identity within those groups, and we have every right to that identity.

You can see that I have a dark skin and features that don't fit the Anglo-American features, and you know that I was born here in New Mexico, my roots are here, so I demand to have a right to that identity. I can live in many cultures, and I can be multicultural and multilingual and still enjoy this identity. You see, the mainstream has tried to take that identity away from us. It didn't work. It caused too many problems and hardships and it ruined too many lives. People have to be free to choose their identity, so they can be fulfilled, so they can be liberated as authentic human beings.

The line of color, even in Mexico is not very well defined. In your writing you have recognized the Indian heritage as part of the Chicano heritage. Maybe as an American you have more in common with Anglo-America than with Mexico?

I probably do. Because I was born and raised in this country. I am a product of its school system, I am a product of an English department at the university and majoring in English language and literature, and the psyche and the history and the popular culture and the racism of this country, so I am a product of this country. I don't deny that. And as you say, probably more so than of Mexico. I have lived here all my life. But I still have to create my own identity, and I want to preserve my Nuevomexicano culture and its values.

You are a writer. Who do you write for?

Sometimes I write for the world, and sometimes I write for the Chicano community and sometimes that community is very specific. Sometimes I write for the Nuevo Mexicanos, the New Mexicans. Sometimes I will write either a scene or a passage thinking of a particular person enjoying that passage. Writing is a communication of my life to everyone. I am very much a part of this Southwest region. So I don't know if my work would strike a chord of recognition in India. But I hope it would, you see, because that's one of my goals, to write for everyone.

Yes. If literature did not have that universal element it will not register beyond its very immediate context. Many American ethnic writers are received very well in India, primarily because they have a great deal of feeling and emotion in their writing which is somehow missing in the mainstream. There is a great deal of experimentation with form.

I would add to that that it's not only our emotion and our passion for writing, we are also presenting to the United States and to the world a particular world view.

What is that world view?

For me, it's part European, it's part Anglo-American, it's part New Mexican, and it was formed in my childhood: the way of life that my parents and my grandparents lived, which was life in a small New Mexico village, a pastoral way of life with sheep, cattle, small farms along the river, very religious and spiritual. Religious and Catholic. Spiritual in the sense of oneness with the universe and the love of the earth which comes from the Native American traditions. A very communal approach to life, values of respect for the old, a very deep attachment to the earth that not only has to do with the pastoral lifestyle but, I think, it has to do with that Native American experience that the Mexicans learned in the Rio Grande. The earth is the mother that nurtures us all with the grains and fruit which we receive. Add the fact that historically we were colonized in the mid-nineteenth century by the United States and you have added a brand new dimension to the world view of the Mexicano. And when two distinct world views and cultures meet, you get an added dimension to life not always pleasant. Sometimes borrowing and sometimes sharing and sometimes growing with each other, but also very often an oppressive situation which I think some Chicanos would insist is the true definition of Chicano. That dialectic between the Chicano and the Anglo-American.

Your work also grows from a strong house of myths and you're also creating myths. What are they?

They are a way to understand the truth or to get to the truth. We want to understand the myths that all people have created on Earth, the spiritual myths of all communal groups. And maybe eventually we will learn the central storehouse of mythology. They're another way of looking at philosophy, spiritual thought, and wisdom. In my case they have to do with an indigenous experience. You know my book Lord of the Dawn, about Quetzalcóatl? It's based on a Mexican legend. I also have an interest in the cuentos (the oral tradition) of my culture. Native American myths resonate in me. They tell me something about myself. So I like to work those ideas into my novels.

Since the publication of your first novel you have done many other novels. Has your perspective as a Chicano writer changed?

I would hope so. I am still very tied to the original idea I had of writing a literature that relates to my community, a literature that describes our experience—in which people can recognize themselves. My perspective has not changed. I have been labeled a regional writer. That used to bother me—it doesn't bother me anymore. Because I see the importance of the work that I'm, that we're, doing.

The label “regional writer” was perceived, and is still perceived, as limiting. But you have the literature of the East, the whole range of writers; you have the literature of the South.

There is a whole world view wrapped up in the South that is defined by their history and their language and how they evolved. And we know so little about it. So we go to the writers and try to understand it. Through the literature we get a sense of their history. Someone said very recently, no one ever called Eugene O'Neill an ethnic writer. Of course he was, but he got incorporated into the canon, so it's much easier to marginalize us or pigeonhole us and put us to the side and say “Oh, those are the ethnic writers,” as if we didn't know anything. That's the problem of not accepting a more eclectic, multicultural point of view. Because then you don't give credit to each community and what it produces. To me that is hypocritical. As Chicanos we are here, and we are going to remain here and we're going to remain an active, creative people. The country will have to listen to us. We're going to make a difference.

Yes, I think there is a greater response to diversity in this country at the moment.

There is also a reaction. While we have more people aware of diversity, and more classes in the universities, there is this big reaction against it. So we have to deal with both sides. The new openness and the old status quo.

In India we have fourteen constitutionally recognized languages with their own literature. So we are familiar with the phenomenon of diversity; literary diversity, which you are not. Our students, when they read Chicano writers, or American Indian writers, still think of them as American writers. Are you happy with that kind of perception?

Yes, that's the way they see us in the beginning. But I think they have to dig deeper and realize the struggle that we've had within the society. We had to create our own literature and to create our own small presses. It hasn't been easy, you see. So, it's all right for your students to accept us that way, but also they have to know our history.

It would not appear to be true in your case considering that your first novel itself sold, if I'm right, more than a million.

No, no, not a million. I think we're at 300,000.

That's quite a reasonable sale for a first novel.

It's astounding in terms of book sales in this country. Bless Me, Ultima was published in 1972, it's now 1992, twenty years later … it's being used in high school, universities, around the world. I think many people still talk about it as a small press phenomenon. I'm very pleased. Now the publication houses of the United States are opening up a little bit to Chicano works. I see now that some of our writers are publishing with Doubleday, or Norton, or New Directions.

You mean there is a general acceptance of minority writing now in this country?

In a limited way. Afro-American writing has had an acceptance for quite a while, published by the big trade publishers. A few Native American writers have had that acceptance, and are recognized. Chicano writers are still on the tail end. I would say it's only been in the past few years that major trade publishers will look at a Chicano writer or publish them. So, the general acceptance is still not there.

Who do you think are the major Chicano writers now?

Maybe I'll give you a bibliography. That way you can look through the names. I think it's dangerous to talk about the major writers when we ourselves are struggling to get all the writers of our culture out and published. There has to be real concern to make sure that women within our culture have access to publication, and that homosexuals and gays have access to publication. That people who have not been able to share in that process have access. I think there is a new generation of young writers some of whom are gaining in importance. We are going to have Denise Chávez here on Friday, Ray González, Luis Urrea. José Montoya is still writing in California, one of the members of the old generation, but still very active. I can go on and on. There is now more of a gathering of other Latino writers in the United States. I think you're going to see the Puerto Ricans and the Cubans really come into the forefront and begin to learn about us and about each other. Virgil Suarez, down in the South is doing an anthology and he published my work, and he wants to come to New Mexico to make a connection with us. He's a Cuban-American writer. The new Latino literature is going to be very exciting in the next five or ten years.

But you will be still writing about the American experience. From a different perspective.

No, we will be writing—I will be writing about my experience within the American experience. There's a difference.

I have read about Chicano writers. Chicano poets. Women writing about literature, and I felt that many of them are writing the same way in which other women were writing than, say, different ethnic groups. Anything universal about this women's writing?

I think if you talk to the Chicana writers their universal response has to do with their struggle in a world that has been defined by men, and as literature has been defined by men, and largely taught and propagated by men. They have that common element. They are now presenting their own voice, which is a new voice, very much like the Chicano male writers presented their voice in the '60s and early '70s.

The ethnic writer wants to be heard. But you want something more than simply being heard by an all-American audience.

Well, isn't that idea of communication crucial to writing? In the beginning was the word, God wanted to be heard. Nothing wrong with a writer wanting to be heard. Because being heard means being able to create in the face of chaos (or in the case of oppression) your own identity. What is heard is your voice and your voice says, I too am a human being! I, too, belong to the human race and I have hopes and fears and aspirations: listen to me! I think that is a very important element of why we dare to write.

I think there is too much reliance on the past in much of the ethnic writing. Too much reliance on past history. Do you think there is a possibility of looking beyond the past into the future?

Writers writing about the future write science fiction, but I don't know too many ethnic writers writing science fiction. There's nothing wrong if your past has never been told, to tell it. We're trying to express our history, our community, our language, our language of the street, our bilingual language, everything that is us because it's never been told. This is what's exciting! We are concerned with the present and the future. That's where our children are going to live, and we have to give them skills to live in that world. But very many of us, or maybe I'll speak for myself, look at life now and into the future and don't see the things I value. Life is getting more violent, more war, more greed, and we are creating technologies that enslave us instead of help us. So why shouldn't I look at values that came from my past, that speak to the human being and my needs, not only as a person but as a spiritual person? Nothing wrong with that. We read world literature and the classics and philosophy, not only contemporary literature, because history gives us clues to the search we have for our identity.

I didn't mean there was anything wrong in that pursuit. How do you relate to the present?

My novel, Alburquerque, looks at my city, Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the traditional cultures of the Rio Grande, at the Chicano, Native American, and what's happening all around us in the city. Change, new people coming here, new industry, money, politics, what all these have to do with my life and my community. The majority of the work that I see coming out now looks at and analyzes our present situation.

There's too much reliance, also, on myths and folklore. What do you think about form? Myth and folklore are very important ingredients of your form, of Chicano literature. Are there any new experimentations in form?

Oh yes. Tremendous amounts of experimentation at the very beginning of the Chicano movement. Poets and writers were writing bilingual poetry, trilingual poetry, or poetry in four or five languages, English, Spanish, Black rhythm, Mexican Nahuatl, Indian, and our street Pachuco talk. [Nahuatl is the native language spoken in Central Mexico and Pachuco is the argot of the Mexican American (Chicano) zoot-suiters of the 1940s. Both languages are still spoken today.] Don't tell me that's not experimentation! It's been there from the beginning! In my own early novel, although it's a traditional story set in a small town in New Mexico, the Spanish language comes across as a crucial ingredient. Some of the newer writers now are very interested in experimenting with style. (Juan Felipe Herrera and Francisco Alarcon are examples.) My own interest is still a more conventional approach to the novel because I want to communicate with my community. That's important to me, so I don't see my role as a stylist. My work comes from the oral tradition, mythology, magical realism, the community, all adapted to fiction.

I gather that the literacy percent is very low among the Chicano community. Do you think lots of people read the literature?

I think many read, but unfortunately the history of the Mexican American people in this country tells us we have not had access to education. We have been a working people.

We have worked in farms and factories. Quite frankly, the generation after World War II and then my generation after the Korean War is the first Chicano generation to have widespread access to education. A small group of us became educated. Now we have a slightly larger group, the present generation, but it's still very low in comparison to the total society. So yes, literacy is a major concern in getting our stories, our poetry, and our theater out to our community. It is a major concern for me.

Do you have a kind of central body of Chicano writers? Something like the national association of Chicano writers?

No. We have a National Association of Chicano Studies that meets once a year. Writers are asked to read and present panels on their work and we meet each other. We really don't have a national association of Chicano writers. It's a good idea.

What are the major journals devoted to Chicano writing?

Las Americas from Arte Público Press and The Bilingual Review from the Hispanic Research Center in Tempe, Arizona State University, La Confluencia from Colorado.

Do you think a Chicano writer can live well by writing?

No. As a matter of fact very few writers can live well, even to say, pay their rent and have food on the table, by writing. Most writers in this country do another job.

Do you feel satisfied as a writer? With your role as a writer?

Extremely satisfied. I think it's the best life that the fates (el destino) could have granted.

I see that you have a large array of honors. What is your ultimate ambition?

I don't have an ultimate. I have now a project to write four novels based on the city of Albuquerque. I have written about the idea of change, people trying to change New Mexico into their own image and the harm that comes to people already here. I've finished the second one, Zia Summer, about storehousing of nuclear waste in New Mexico. I'm working on the third one. So I would say short-term it's to finish this quartet of novels.

Are there writers writing plays, drama? Do you have a tradition of Chicano drama?

Yes. We have a long tradition. In the old Mexicano newspapers of the Southwest, literature was included. And theater troops from Mexico used to come up and perform theater. We have folk theater and dances in the pueblos. And, now we have the Chicano movement, teatro. Luis Valdez was very important in Chicano theater, and he's gone on to make movies. Jorge Huerta is very well known. We have here in Albuquerque a bilingual theater company that has produced some of my plays, and the plays of other writers, not only from the state but international writers. A good theater movement, struggling but good.

Thank you very much. I avoided asking you more universal questions, criticisms and theory because I wanted you to talk basically to reach out to the students and teachers.

Well, it's also best, because, as you know, I think of myself as a writer.