“Ana Castillo is an American treasure. Fearless, compassionate, and flat-out brilliant—she is the writer we need as we navigate the challenges of our ever-changing world.”—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage 
“Ana Castillo is de primera storyteller.”—award-winning author Julia Alvarez 
Literary legend Ana Castillo explores the secrets that are kept within households and the women they impact the most in this breakout collection that cements her place as a leading voice in feminist fiction. 
The first person in her traditional Mexican American family to graduate from high school, Katia is entering adulthood at a time of turbulent change. Across the nation young people are fighting for civil and women’s rights and protesting the Vietnam War and brutal dictatorships in South America. Like so many of her generation, Katia wants to make the world a better place, and is determined to follow her own path. 
As she considers moving to California to join La Causa, Mexican American activist Cesar Chavez’s movement to improve the working conditions of migrant farmer workers, Katia receives an unexpected gift from her father: a plane ticket to Mexico City. Bring back your mother, he says, tell her, her children need her. And so Katia joins this cause, to get Tina back to Chicago. But it won't be easy. Katia must learn to navigate a liberated version of her mother in a new country where she is now hawking supposedly superior cleaning products, called Donna Clean Well. 
Katia is but one of the voices introduced in this dazzling collection of short fiction from revered writer Ana Castillo. Spanning from Chicago to Mexico to New Mexico, the stories in Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home illuminate a chorus of people whose stories will leave you breathless.

Dona Cleanwell Leaves Home: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Castillo, Ana

United States

HarperVia

Published to coincide with the Anchor Books edition of Peel My Love Like an Onion, this Spanish translation is a major addition to the Vintage Español list. Equal parts soap opera, tragicomedy, and rhapsody, Carmen la coja is Ana Castillo's imaginative variation on the themes of Bizet's Carmen, set in the Latin community of Chicago and the seductive world of flamenco. Carmen "La Coja" Santos is a renowned local dancer who has long maintained an affair with the great Agustín, the married director of her troupe. An angry rivalry is sparked when she begins a passionate new liaison with Agusín's grandson, the gifted Manolo; her childhood polio returns; and her already aggravating relationship with her mother takes a difficult turn. But in the end, Carmen, unlike her namesake, finds her way back to happiness.

Carmen la Coja

Vintage Espanol

"A wonderful, wonderful book." —Maxine Hong Kingston Focusing on the relationship between two fiercely independent women—Teresa, a writer, and Alicia, an artist—this epistolary novel was written as a tribute to Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch and examines Latina forms of love, gender conflict, and female friendship. This groundbreaking debut novel received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and is widely studied as a feminist text on the nature of self-conflict.

The Mixquiahuala Letters

Bilingual Review Press

In Sapogonia, edited and revised for its Anchor publication, Ana Castillo confronts the complex issues of race and identity facing those of mixed heritage through the struggles of Máximo Madrigal, an expatriate of Sapogonia, the metaphorical homeleand of all mestizos. Subtly political, it demonstrates how warring blood within a single body resists any peaceful resolution.

Sapogonia

Anchor

Peel My Love Like an Onion is the breakthrough novel from Ana Castillo, author of the wildly praised So Far from God--a lyrical, steamy, and moving story of a love triangle set in the colorful world of flamenco dancing. Carmen "La Coja" ("the cripple") Santos is a flamenco dancer of local renown in Chicago, despite the obstacle of a handicapped leg, the legacy of a childhood attack of polio. From the beginning of her professional career, she has carried on an affair with Agustín, the married director of her troupe--a romance that is going stale from overfamiliar lust and an absence of honesty. But when she begins a passionate liaison with the younger Manolo, Agustín's godson and a dancer of natural genius, an angry rivalry is sparked. Add to that the looming reassertion of her crippling disease and Carmen's vexed relations with her mother, one of the most exasperating parents in recent literature, and you have all the ingredients for a love story à la Ana Castillo--equal parts soap opera, tragicomedy, and rhapsody. Laced with sarcastic asides and dead-on observations, Peel My Love Like an Onion is a universal work imbued with love's power to vex and exalt.

Peel My Love Like an Onion

DOUBLEDAY

The seductive world of flamenco forms the backdrop for a classic tale of independence found, lost, and reclaimed. Like Bizet's legendary gypsy, Carmen "La Coja" (The Cripple) Santos is hilarious, passionate, triumphant, and mesmerizing. A renowned flamenco dancer in Chicago despite the legacy of childhood polio, Carmen has long enjoyed an affair with Agustín, the married director of her troupe--a romance that's now growing stale. When she begins a new, passionate liaison with Manolo, Agustín's grandson and a dancer of natural genius, an angry rivalry is sparked. Carmen finally makes her way back to happiness in this funny, fiery story that's equal parts soap opera, tragicomedy, and rhapsody.

Peel My Love Like an Onion: A Novel

Dramas & Plays

An Anchor Books Original Cherished for her passionate fiction and exuberant essays, the author hailed by Julia Alvarez as "una storyteller de primera," and by Barbara Kingsolver in The Los Angeles Times as "impossible to resist," returns to her first love—poetry—to reveal an unwavering commitment to social justice, and a fervent embrace of the sensual world. With the poems in I Ask the Impossible, Castillo celebrates the strength that "is a woman?buried deep in [her] heart." Whether memorializing real-life heroines who have risked their lives for humanity, spinning a lighthearted tale for her young son, or penning odes to mortals, gods, goddesses, Castillo's poems are eloquent and rich with insight. She shares over twelve years of poetic inspiration, from her days as a writer who "once wrote poems in a basement with no heat," through the tenderness of motherhood and bitterness of loss, to the strength of love itself, which can "make the impossible a simple act." Radiant with keen perception, wit, and urgency, sometimes erotic, often funny, this inspiring collection sounds the unmistakable voice of a "woman on fire" and "more worthy than stone."

I Ask the Impossible: Poems

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Sofia and her daughters, Fe, Esperanza, Caridad, and la Loca, endure hardship and enjoy love in the sleepy New Mexico hamlet of Tome, where the comic and the horrific, the real and the supernatural, reside. 15,000 first printing. Tour.

So Far from God: A Novel

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

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 esthetic issues, Ana Castillo's poetic voice is unmistakably her own - and will be immediately recognizable to the lovers of her fiction.

My Father Was a Toltec: And Selected Poems : 1973 1988

A new collection of stories by the award-winning author of So Far from God explores the experience of love in all its diverse modes, from rapturous beginnings to bittersweet ends, in "La Miss Rose," "Vatolandia," and the title tale. Tour.

Loverboys: Stories

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Castillo, Ana. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Castillo, Ana