Serafina's Stories

Rudolfo Anaya

kesä 2015 · Open Road Media

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This innovative novel combines Spanish folktales with Native American legends to create a captivating Southwestern version of The Arabian Nights.

Like Scheherezade, who ensured her survival by telling her royal husband stories, the title character in Rudolfo Anaya’s creative retelling of The Arabian Nights must entertain the recently widowed governor with legends of Nueva Mexicana, or she and her fellow captives will die.

With fresh snow covering the high peaks of Sangre de Cristo, a group of native dissidents prepare for revolt. In seventeenth-century Santa Fe, insurrection against a colony of the king of Spain is punishable by death. A Spaniard loyal to the governor names twelve conspirators. One of them is a young woman. Raised in a mission church, fifteen-year-old Serafina speaks excellent Spanish and knows many of her country’s traditional folktales. She and the governor strike a bargain: Each evening, she will tell him a cuento. If he likes it, he will release one prisoner the following day.

The twelve tales recounted here mirror the struggle of a divided country. They include the social and political symbolism behind “Beauty and the Beast” and retell “Cinderella” as “Miranda’s Gift.” Interspersed with these timeless cuentos is the story of Serafina herself, and that of a people battling to preserve a vanishing way of life under the long shadow of the Inquisition.

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Rudolfo Anaya was professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. He received numerous literary awards, including the Premio Quinto Sol and a National Medal of Arts. He is the author of the classic work Bless Me, Ultima, which was chosen for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read. Anaya’s other books for adults include Tortuga, Heart of Aztlan, Alburquerque, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, Jemez Spring, Serafina’s Stories, The Man Who Could Fly and Other Stories, and Rudolfo Anaya: The Essays. His children’s books include Farolitos of Christmas, My Land Sings, Elegy on the Death of César Chávez, Roadrunner’s Dance, and The First Tortilla. Bless Me, Ultima was adapted into a feature film in 2013.