Castillo, Ana (1953–)

Ana Castillo is an acclaimed Chicana/Latina poet, novelist, and essayist as well as editor and translator. Born in Chicago on 15 June 1953, she received a B.A. degree from Northern Illinois University in 1975, an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1979, and a PhD from the University of Bremen, Germany, in 1991. A self-proclaimed Xicanista, or Chicana, feminist, Castillo is innovative and provocative in her writing. She is known for her poetry collections, novels such as The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986), So Far from God (1993), and Peel My Love Like an Onion (1999), and nonfiction such as Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (1994). Castillo's honors include two NEA fellowships (1990, 1995), the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award (1987) and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award in Fiction (1993). The Ana Castillo Archives are housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

See alsoHispanics in the United States; Literature: Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poetry by Castillo

Women Are Not Roses. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 1984.

My Father Was a Toltec: Poems. Albuquerque, NM: West End Press, 1988.

My Father Was a Toltec and Selected Poems, 1973–1988. New York: Norton, 1995.

I Ask the Impossible. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Novels and Short Stories by Castillo

The Mixquiahuala Letters. Binghamton, NY: Bilingual Press, 1986. Reprinted, 1992.

Sapogonia: An Anti-Romance in 3/8 Meter. Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press, 1990.

So Far from God. New York: Norton, 1993.

Las cartas de Mixquiahuala. Translated by Mónica Mansour. Mexico City: Grijalbo/Conaculta, 1994.

Loverboys: Short Stories. New York: Norton, 1996.

Peel My Love Like an Onion. New York: Doubleday/Random House, 1999.

Desnuda mi corazón como una cebolla. Mexico City: Alfaguara, 2001.

Watercolor Women, Opaque Men (Novel in Verse). Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2005.

Other Works by Castillo

PSST … I Have Something to Tell You, Mi Amor (play). San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2005.

My Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, the Dove: An Aztec Chant (children's book). New York: Dutton, 2000.

Editions and Translation by Castillo

Esta puente, mi espalda: Voces de mujeres tercermundistas en los Estados Unidos, ed. Cherríe Moraga and Ana Castillo; trans. Ana Castillo and Norma Alarcón. San Francisco: ISM Press, 1988.

Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma. Edited by Ana Castillo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.

Secondary Works

Delgadillo, Theresa. "Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo's So Far from God." Modern Fiction Studies 44, no. 4 (1998): 888-916.

Quintana, Alvina E. "Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters: The Novelist as Ethnographer." In Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, ed. Héctor Calderón and José David Saldivar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.

                                     Claire Joysmith