Billy the Kid and Other Plays: 10 (Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Américas Series) - Softcover

Rudolfo Anaya (author), Cecilia J. Aragón (Afterword By) & Robert Con Davis-Undiano (Afterword By)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806142251 ISBN 13: 9780806142258

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011

Synopsis

While award-winning author Rudolfo Anaya is known primarily as a novelist, his genius is also evident in dramatic works performed regularly in his native New Mexico and throughout the world. Billy the Kid and Other Plays collects seven of these works and offers them together for the first time. Like his novels, many of Anaya’s plays are built from the folklore of the Southwest. This volume opens with The Season of La Llorona, in which Anaya fuses the Mexican legend of the dreaded “crying woman” with that of La Malinche, mistress and adviser to Hernán Cortés. Southwestern lore also shapes the title play, which provides a Mexican American perspective on the Kid—or Bilito, as he is known inNew Mexico—along with keen insight into the slipperiness of history. The Farolitos of Christmas and Matachines uncover both the sweet and the sinister in stories behind seasonal New Mexican rituals. Other plays here address loss of the old ways—farming, connection to the land, the primacy of family—while showing the power of change. The mystery Who Killed Don José? uses the murder of a wealthy sheep rancher to look at political corruption and modernization. Ay, Compadre! and Angie address aging and death, though with refreshing humor and optimism. Elegant and poetic, intense and funny, these are the plays Anaya considers his best. The author tells how each originated, while Cecilia J. Aragón and Robert Con Davis- Undiano offer critical analysis and performance history. Both Anaya fans and readers new to his work will find this collection a rich trove, as will community theaters and scholars in Chicano literature and drama.

About this title

About the Author

Rudolfo Anaya is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico and award-winning author of numerous books including the classic Bless Me, Ultima. He has received myriad awards and honors for his work including Western Writers of America's Owen Wister Award (2018), the National Humanities Medal (2015), the National Medal of Arts (2001) and the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes (2012). He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the Southwest has served as an inspiration for his writing throughout his life.

Robert Con Davis-Undiano is Neustadt Professor and Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma and Executive Director of World Literature Today. Among his many publications are The Paternal Romance: Reading God-the-Father in Early Western Culture and Criticism and Culture: The Role of Critique in Modern Literary Theory.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806142251
• ISBN 13: 9780806142258
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384