University of New Mexico Press, 1988 The city usually swallows up the people who move . -- Neighbor Immigration. Racism. Socialism. All challenges we face today, and the main and universal themes in Rudolfo A. Anaya’s HEART OF AZTLAN published almost 40 years ago. The story follows a small family who move from the country to the big city for a better life. All they get is poverty, gang wars, violence, loss of culture, values and family. But, there is hope at the end and determination to survive, to be stronger and to unite the family -- that’s every family’s dream. SUMMARY: T he Albuquerque barrio portrayed in this vivid novel of postwar New Mexico is a place where urban and rural, political and religious realities coexist, collide, and combine. The magic realism for which Anaya is well known combines with an emphatic portrayal of the plight of workers dispossessed of their heritage and struggling to survive in an a...