New Reader: Transnational Chicanx Perspectives on Ana Castillo (Univ of Pittsburgh Press) December 12, 2020 – Posted in: Books, recent

For more than forty years, Chicana author Ana Castillo has produced novels, poems, and critical essays that forge connections between generations; challenge borders around race, gender, and sexuality; and critically engage transnational issues of space, identity, and belonging. Her contributions to Latinx cultural production and to Chicana feminist thought have transcended and contributed to feminist praxis, ethnic literature, and border studies throughout the Americas.

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Indigenous Fashion Week–dress up at home. November 28, 2020 – Posted in: Blog, Books

If you follow this blog and can take one thing away from this post–

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GIVE IT TO ME: A summer read July 18, 2020 – Posted in: Blog, Books

Mucho traffic and a stampede of plebes down below. Above all, Mulch. Mulch was what Palma Piedras called the wide and astonishingly ordinary middle class at the start of the twenty-first century.

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Black Dove (Personal Essays / memoir, 2016) January 23, 2016 – Posted in: Books

Recipient of International Latino Book Award in autobiography, LAMBDA award in best bisexual non-fiction. Paloma Negra,” Ana Castillo’s mother sings the day her daughter leaves home, “I don’t know if I should curse you or pray for you.” Growing up as the intellectually spirited daughter of a Mexican Indian immigrant family during the 1970s, Castillo defied convention as a writer and a feminist. A generation later, her mother’s crooning mariachi lyrics resonate once again. Castillo—now an…

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Watercolor Women, Opaque Men (novel in verse, Northwestern University Press, 2nd edition, 2015) February 22, 2015 – Posted in: Books

2006 Independent Publisher Book Award for Story Teller of the Year Reminiscent of the picaresque novel, Watercolor Women / Opaque Men contains episodes that range from the Mexican Revolution to modern-day Chicago and reflects a deep pride in Chicano culture and the hardships immigrants had to endure. “A shape shifting voice and earth shaking figures of her story: …the poetic structure of Castillo’s novel glides smoothly and compellingly in tercets…like some unstoppable force…” — BUY EBOOK “…Ana Castillo…

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Give it to me (novel, Feminist Press, 2015) January 24, 2015 – Posted in: Books

Palma Piedras is forty-two, just divorced, and back in the U.S. after several years in Colombia, where her now ex-husband had tried to make her into a traditional South American wife while he plied the family (drug) trade. The grandmother who raised her while the parents she can’t remember picked produce in Southern California is dead (not that her being alive would have made much of a difference, since their relationship was at best irascible).…

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Massacre Of The Dreamers (20Th University Edition, Available. University Of New Mexico Press, 2014) January 24, 2014 – Posted in: Books

The “I” in these critical essays by novelist, poet, scholar, and activist/curandera Ana Castillo is that of the Mexic-Amerindian woman living in the United States. The essays are addressed to everyone interested in the roots of the colonized woman’s reality. Castillo introduces the term Xicanisma in a passionate call for a politically active, socially committed Chicana feminism. In “A Countryless Woman, ” Castillo outlines the experience of the brown woman in a racist society that…

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Bocaditos (Wings Press, San Antonio, 2009) January 27, 2009 – Posted in: Books

Bocaditos: Flash Fictions is Ana Castillo’s first chapbook in many years. Limited to 300 numbered and signed copies, this 40-page chapbook is printed on non-acidic, 80% post-consumer waste recycled paper, with a hand-sewn spine. A die-cut window in the cover reveals a self portrait painted by Ana Castillo. (Oil, mixed media on canvas.) As Ana writes in her Preface: “These are independent stories or excerpts from much longer ones that developed from my solitary life and…

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Loverboys (Stories, W.W. Norton & Co.; NY, paperback, 2008) March 8, 2008 – Posted in: Books

“Seductive … full of infectious vigor … these stories demand, above all, to be listened to.”―New York Times Book Review From Ana Castillo, the widely praised author of So Far from God and The Guardians, comes this collection of stories on the experience of love in all its myriad configurations. Infectiously moody and murderously comic, Castillo chronicles the rapturous beginnings, melancholy middles, and bittersweet endings of modern romance between men and women, men and men,…

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The Guardians (Novel 2007) January 24, 2007 – Posted in: Books

From American Book Award-winning author Ana Castillo comes a suspenseful, moving new novel about a sensuous, smart, and fiercely independent woman. Eking out a living as a teacher’s aide in a small New Mexican border town, Tía Regina is also raising her teenage nephew, Gabo, a hardworking boy who has entered the country illegally and aspires to the priesthood. When Gabo’s father, Rafa, disappears while crossing over from Mexico, Regina fears the worst. After several…