[18] In additional ways Anaya's family and that of his young protagonist parallel: Both Rafaelita's first and second husbands were vaqueros (cowboys) who preferred life riding horses, herding cattle and roaming the llano, as did Antonio's father, Gabriel.

As a small child Anaya moved with his family from Las Pasturas, his relatively isolated birthplace on the llano to Santa Rosa, a "city" by New Mexico standards of the time.

Anaya's work aims to reflect the uniqueness of the Hispano experience in the context of modernization in New Mexico—a place bearing the memory of European and indigenous cultures in contact spanning nearly half a millennium.

[19] Cynthia Darche Park, a professor at San Diego State University, claims "These contradictions reflect political conquest and colonization that in the first instance put the Hispano-European ways of thinking, believing, and doing in the power position relative to those of the indigenous peoples."

The mixed cultural influences and a long history of intermarriage among the Hispanos and the indigenous peoples (i.e., the mestizaje) remained largely intact throughout rural New Mexico well into the 20th century.

As the Hispano community's beliefs and ways of doing things interacted with those of the Native Americans, a cultural pattern evolved in which indigenous myth maintained importance alongside Catholic doctrine.

The impact of modernization and war, therefore, did not exclude the Hispanos and indigenous peoples of New Mexico as the boundaries of their previously insular communities were crossed by these external technological and cultural influences.

[3] The United States in the decades of the 1960s and 70's underwent a series of deep societal changes which some scholars deem to have been as apocalyptic to U.S. society as the detonation of the Atomic bomb was to the New Mexican peoples in 1945.

Tonn points out that events surrounding the struggle for civil rights, the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and later of Martin Luther King Jr., urban disturbances such as Watts and Detroit posed deep-seated "challenges to the dominant self-image of United States Society…" "…leading to fundamental shifts in societal values and mores.

Set in the small town of Guadalupe, New Mexico, just after World War II,[18] Antonio Márez y Luna (Tony) tells his story from the memories of his adult self, who reflects on his growing up.

At the same time, realizing that the Church represents the female values of his mother, Tony cannot bring himself to accept the lawlessness, violence and unthinking sensuality which his father and older brothers symbolize.

[30] At the conclusion of the novel, Antonio reflects on the tension that he feels as he is pulled between his father's free, open landscape of the llano, and his mother's circumscribed river valley of the town.

In addition, he reflects on the pull between Catholicism and the continuation of Ultima's spiritual legacy and concludes that he does not need to choose one over the other, but can bring both together to form a new identity and a new religion that is made up of both.

Ultima understands the philosophy and the morality of the ancient peoples of New Mexico and teaches Tony through example, experience and critical reflection, the universal principles that explain and sustain life.

Hot-tempered and vengeful, Tenorio spends the rest of the novel plotting Ultima's death, which he finally achieves by killing her owl familiar, her spiritual guardian.

Antonio's friends: Abel, Bones, Ernie, Horse, Lloyd, Red, and the Vitamin Kid – An exuberant group of boys who frequently curse and fight.

The Revolution's goals included returning to Mexico's indigenous peoples their dignity as full-fledged citizens by relieving them from a history of exploitation, providing them with material progress and social justice.

In return for this, Mexican Indians would give up their old customs, speak Spanish and join the mainstream of national life, defined as mestizo, the biological issue of mixed-race parentage.

(16)[12] Michael Fink uses a wider lens to suggest that Anaya's seminal novel is a contribution to identity and memory politics that provides us with "a set of strategies of transcultural survival .

His reconstructive analysis shows how Antonio, as narrator, solves and resolves his troubling metaphysical questions through a series of revelations mediated by Ultima and her otherworldly connections.

[40] Candace Morales, a graduate student pursuing a Masters of Science in Education while concentrating in Reading, proposes that in a curriculum that utilizes Bless Me Ultima as a piece of multicultural literature, it must be timed appropriately.

Specifically, she suggests teaching it to middle schoolers so that they have a diverse lens (that of a Chicano/a culture) to view their own development; to Morales, Antonio's own pursuit of “knowledge, truth, and personal identity” will resonate with the students as well.

for its communication of tender emotion and powerful spirituality ...; for its eloquent presentation of Chicano consciousness in all its intriguing complexity; finally, for being an American novel which accomplishes a harmonious resolution, transcendent and hopeful.

[48] A particularly vivid experience in the censorship of this book for the author, Rudolfo Anaya, was in 1981: the Bloomfield School Board in San Juan County, New Mexico burned copies of the Bless Me, Ultima.

[51]: 228 [52] However, a local paper, The Austin American Statesman, claimed “ Refusing to allow credit for those celebrated literary works would have been an unnecessary intrusion by the school board.” After multiple hearing and proposals, the board came to a 4–2 vote against the banning of the book.

[56] Conder ended the protest at midday by telling the students that he plans to stand with the decision of what a new a curriculum review committee, that will have two representatives from each grade alongside parents.

[59] Ultimately, the board trustees voted 4–1 to remove Bless Me, Ultima from the curriculum however the novel will continue to remain in the library based on the grounds of the previous complaint made.

[64] Also in partnership with The Big Read program, Denver, Colorado's premier Chicano theater company, Su Teatro, produced a full-length workshop stage production of Bless Me, Ultima, for which Anaya himself wrote the adaptation.

[67] An encore production was done at The Shadow Theater in Denver on June 26 and 27, 2009, with the title roles of Ultima played by Yolanda Ortega, Antonio Marez by Isabelle Fries, and The Author by Jose Aguila.

[citation needed] The Vortex Theatre in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in partnership with the National Hispanic Center, produced a full stage production of the show from March 26, to April 25, 2010.