RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) – Rudolfo Anaya, a writer who helped launch the 1970s Chicano Literature Movement with his novel “Bless Me, Ultima,” a book celebrated by Latinos, has died at 82.

Anaya’s niece, Belinda Henry, said the celebrated author died Sunday at his Albuquerque, New Mexico, home after suffering from a long illness.

Literary critics say Anaya’s World War II-era novel about a young Mexican-American boy’s relationship with an older curandera, or healer, influenced a generation of Latino writers because of its imagery and cultural references that were rare at the time of its 1972 publication.

In a 2013 interview on C-SPAN, Anaya said the idea of the novel came after he had a vision of a woman at the doorway of a room where he was writing.

“She said, ‘You’ll never get it right unless you put me in it’,” Anaya said. “I said, ‘Who are you?’ She said, ‘Ultima’ … And there it was.”

The book’s release coincided with the growing and militant Chicano movement that stressed cultural pride over assimilation.

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