SOURCE: “The Mainstream Discovers Rudolfo Anaya,” in Publishers Weekly, March 21, 1994, p. 24.

In the following essay, Clark discusses the enduring success of Bless Me, Ultima, and Anaya's increasing mainstream popularity and recognition.

What may be most striking about the six-title, six-figure book deal that New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya recently concluded with Warner Books is that this major recognition has been so slow in coming.

Long hailed as one of the founding fathers of Chicano literature, described in the New York Times Book Review as “the novelist most widely known and read in the Latino community,” in Newsweek as “the most widely read Mexican-American” period, Anaya is, as Newsweek also points out, “celebrated in the West and barely known back East.” But all that is about to change, beginning in April, when Warner will simultaneously publish mass market paperback and color-illustrated hardcover editions of Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya's classic...