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'A Moment of Magic': Coyote, Tricksterism, and the Role of the Shaman in Rudolfo Anaya's Sonny Baca Novels Roy Turner

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'A Moment of Magic': Coyote, Tricksterism, and the Role of the Shaman in Rudolfo Anaya's Sonny Baca Novels Roy Turner University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository English Language and Literature ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 9-5-2013 'A Moment of Magic': Coyote, Tricksterism, and the Role of the Shaman in Rudolfo Anaya's Sonny Baca Novels Roy Turner Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Turner, Roy. "'A Moment of Magic': Coyote, Tricksterism, and the Role of the Shaman in Rudolfo Anaya's Sonny Baca Novels." (2013). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/22 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Language and Literature ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Roy Turner Candidate English Literature and Language Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Kathleen Washburn, Chairperson Feroza Jussawalla Lloyd Lee Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán i “A MOMENT OF MAGIC”: COYOTE, TRICKSTERISM, AND THE ROLE OF THE SHAMAN IN RUDOLFO ANAYA’S SONNY BACA NOVELS BY ROY TURNER B.A., English and Italian, Brigham Young University, 2000 M.A., English, Brigham Young University, 2002 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy English The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July 2013 ii DEDICATION In memory of Hector Torres, whose guidance in the early stages of this project was invaluable, and whose absence fills its pages. A true “Señor de la luz” whose spirit of generosity and inquiry speaks to me as I read, research, and write. You are missed by many. For my children—Allyson, Ryan, Isaac, and Evan—whose light guides me in all I do and inspires me to be the father they deserve. May your futures be full of magic, joy, and possibility. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been a lengthy undertaking, and its realization comes with the immense support of my committee, the English Department faculty and staff, and my family and friends. Thanks go to Dr. Jussawalla, Dr. Lee, and Dr. Vizcaíno-Alemán, who joined this committee when I was far away and in need. Your willingness to take on a new responsibility touches me and testifies to your commitment to students. Similarly, Dr. Washburn, who assumed the role of chairperson, has supported, challenged, and taught me throughout this process. You have shown the ideal blend of patience and insistence, encouraging and pushing me perfectly. The support and assistance offered by Dr. Houston and Dr. Obermeier helped me in my darkest hours, and all the time, Ezra Meier’s tirelessness and professionalism in guiding me through the procedures and policies demonstrated the best that the University aspires to. I appreciate all of the hours spent in shepherding me through the processes leading to this point. Above all, thanks to my wife, Summer, whose determination in all she does has given me hope when I felt overwhelmed and vision when I have felt lost. Your passion for those things that matter most in life consistently gives me motivation. I love and admire you beyond words, even when words are all we have. iv ABSTRACT In Rudolfo Anaya’s Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring, the protagonist—Sonny Baca—undertakes a murder investigation that ultimately leads him to confront Raven, a mysterious figure whose acts of violence threaten the social fabric of Albuquerque, the American Southwest, and the entire world. In battling Raven, Sonny comes to realize that both he and his foe have the ability to access a spiritual power that takes root in the myths and belief systems of various cultures, including Sonny’s Chicano community, Native American peoples of the region, and ancient civilizations throughout the world, from which Sonny draws power as he becomes a shaman and healer. This dissertation explores how Anaya presents Sonny’s transformation as a model for self- empowerment in the face of colonial and neo-colonial violence. Tracing postcolonial theory, border studies, and contemporary discussions of trickster figures in Native cultures, this study argues that Anaya confronts both the genre expectations of the detective novel and the implicit racism and discrimination that continue to pervade cross- cultural interactions in the Southwest. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 AN OVERVIEW OF RUDOLFO ANAYA’S LITERARY AND THEORETICAL WORK ...............................................................................1 CHAPTER 2 ANAYA, NATIVE AMERICAN LITERARY THEORY, AND TRICKSTER TEXTS ....................................................................................23 CHAPTER 3 ZIA SUMMER: THE CYCLE BEGINS (AGAIN) ..............................66 CHAPTER 4 RIO GRANDE FALL: THE DETECTIVE WHO FLIES .....................104 CHAPTER 5 SHAMAN WINTER: ENTERING THE DREAMS OF/WITH THE ANCESTORS ................................................................................................134 CHAPTER 6 JEMEZ SPRING: THE END AND THE BEGINNING ......................165 CHAPTER 7 A CONVERSATION WITH A TRICKSTER AUTHOR ....................200 APPENDIX: INTERVIEW WITH RUDOLFO ANAYA ..........................................206 vi CHAPTER 1 AN OVERVIEW OF RUDOLFO ANAYA’S LITERARY AND THEORETICAL WORK Colonial systems function in a variety of ways, from the overt economic and political control evidenced in classical European colonialism to the more subtle forms of neo- colonialism of educational structures that favor a certain historical narrative or epistemological model of understanding human experience. Regardless of the specifics, the underlying purpose remains the same—valorizing those behaviors and beliefs which sustain and expand hegemony while discrediting and/or ignoring alternative modes of interpreting and defining reality. In contemporary American society, such colonialist practices frequently emerge in the form of suppressing voting rights among minorities, perpetuating racial stereotypes through popular culture, and limiting the extent to which value systems that contradict the meta-narrative of scientific progress and capitalism achieve validation. In this light, colonialism extends to a wide range of systems that all seek to dictate the terms of the discourse by which ontological categories of real or imaginary can be understood. The modern, scientifically-based, Western mode of epistemology separates the rational, tangible world of everyday experience from the intuitive, invisible ways of knowing understood variously as religion, superstition, mystery, and magic, particularly when those modes of interpreting experience derive from cultures that colonial powers viewed as primitive or backwards. A significant part of the colonial experience has been the labeling of entire populations—and their belief systems—as irrational and therefore less “real” than the seemingly objective nature of the Cartesian logic of the modern world. Countless examples of this classification exist, from academic disciplines (arts vs. sciences, for example) to pop psychology and the 1 distinction between left-brained and right-brained people and their learning styles. It is not unreasonable to assert that the entire goal of Western modernity seems to be defining and categorizing the universe into these two fields—what we cannot see and thus cannot truly know, and what we can measure and quantify. Into this space come postcolonial expressions of resistance, in a variety of forms— artistic, intellectual, political, economic, and religious. Regardless of the way in which that resistance emerges, it consistently identifies and targets a gap in the colonial endeavor, exploiting that opportunity to refashion the discourse, reimagine the contours of the social structures, and rethink the parameters of the ontological possibilities that exist outside of the hegemonic norms. Since the mid-twentieth-century and the rise of postcolonial thought, theorists and artists have explored the ways in which hybridity, subversion of hegemonic values systems, and the expression of alternative histories serve to empower the colonized. Among the most interesting of these forms of resistance are those that go beyond the immediate realm of material circumstances, focusing instead (or, more often, in addition) on the various ways in which colonized peoples expressed religious belief as an epistemological framework that opposes the official and standardized models of the colonial center. Expressions of pre-colonial and anti-colonial systems of belief and practice mark the modes of resistance to hegemony in places as varied as sub-Saharan Africa, South America, India, and the Caribbean. In these and countless other settings, populations living at the physical and psychic margins of society reanimate, reshape, and re-create non-Western religious systems that the colonial center either forgot or never saw in the first place, forming syncretic forms of belief that respond 2 to the experience of colonized peoples. In the American Southwest, the space imagined in the late twentieth century as the Chicano homeland of Aztlán, a powerful version of this form of resistance finds expression in the syncretism of indigenous and Western beliefs, the blending of santos and kachinas into new representations of spirituality and communal self-identification. For writers from
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