Ana Castillo has a deserved reputation as one of the country's most powerful and entrancing novelists, but she began her literary career as a poet of passion and uncompromising commitment. This collection brings back into print the best of her early work, including selected poems from The Invitation and Women Are Not Roses and the entire text of her landmark 1988 collection, My Father Was a Toltec.

Whether invoking her origins as the daughter of a street warrior, a member of the Toltec gang in Chicago, or defining her own lyrical positions on a variety of social, political, sexual, and aesthetic issues, Castillo's poetic voice is unmistakably her own—and will be immediately recognizable to the lovers of her fiction.

“Ana Castillo's use of Spanish, Chicago street lingo, and English in My Father Was a Toltec is exciting and—forerunners notwithstanding—absolutely new.” —Margaret Randall, Women's Review of Books

“Ana Castillo is immensely insightful in every sense of the word. Her work—anything and everything written by her, poems, stories, novels—must be read if one is to gain understanding of the vast landscape of the soul.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Ana Castillo is the author of the novels The Guardians, Peel My Love Like an Onioin, So Far from God, The Mixquiahuala Letters, and Sapogonia. She has written a story collection, Loverboys; the crtitical study Massacre of the Dreamers; the poetry collection My Father Was a Toltec and Selected Poems; and the children's book My Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, The Dove. She is the editor of the anthology Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe, available from Vintage Espanol (La diosa de las Americas). Castillo has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award, a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Chicago with her son, Marcel.

Ana Castillo es la autora de las novelas The Guardians, Peel My Love Like an Onion, The Mixquiahuala Letters, So Far from God y Sapogonia; la colección de cuentos Loverboys; el estudio crítico Massacre of the Dreamers; y la colección de poemas My Father Was a Toltec. Ha sido galardonada con el Carl Sandburg Prize, el Southwestern Booksellers Award y el American Book Award. Vive en Chicago con su hijo Marcel. View titles by Ana Castillo

About

Ana Castillo has a deserved reputation as one of the country's most powerful and entrancing novelists, but she began her literary career as a poet of passion and uncompromising commitment. This collection brings back into print the best of her early work, including selected poems from The Invitation and Women Are Not Roses and the entire text of her landmark 1988 collection, My Father Was a Toltec.

Whether invoking her origins as the daughter of a street warrior, a member of the Toltec gang in Chicago, or defining her own lyrical positions on a variety of social, political, sexual, and aesthetic issues, Castillo's poetic voice is unmistakably her own—and will be immediately recognizable to the lovers of her fiction.

“Ana Castillo's use of Spanish, Chicago street lingo, and English in My Father Was a Toltec is exciting and—forerunners notwithstanding—absolutely new.” —Margaret Randall, Women's Review of Books

“Ana Castillo is immensely insightful in every sense of the word. Her work—anything and everything written by her, poems, stories, novels—must be read if one is to gain understanding of the vast landscape of the soul.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Author

Ana Castillo is the author of the novels The Guardians, Peel My Love Like an Onioin, So Far from God, The Mixquiahuala Letters, and Sapogonia. She has written a story collection, Loverboys; the crtitical study Massacre of the Dreamers; the poetry collection My Father Was a Toltec and Selected Poems; and the children's book My Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, The Dove. She is the editor of the anthology Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe, available from Vintage Espanol (La diosa de las Americas). Castillo has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award, a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Chicago with her son, Marcel.

Ana Castillo es la autora de las novelas The Guardians, Peel My Love Like an Onion, The Mixquiahuala Letters, So Far from God y Sapogonia; la colección de cuentos Loverboys; el estudio crítico Massacre of the Dreamers; y la colección de poemas My Father Was a Toltec. Ha sido galardonada con el Carl Sandburg Prize, el Southwestern Booksellers Award y el American Book Award. Vive en Chicago con su hijo Marcel. View titles by Ana Castillo

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