Women Are Not Roses

by Ana Castillo

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

Ana Castillo (June 15, 1953-) is a celebrated and distinguished poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Castillo was born and raised in Chicago. She has contributed to periodicals and on-line venues (Salon and Oxygen) and national magazines, including More and the Sunday New York Times. Castillo’s writings have been the subject of numerous scholarly investigations and publications. Among her award winning, best sellling titles: novels include So Far From God, The Guardians and Peel My Love like an Onion, among other poetry: I Ask the Impossible. Her novel, Sapogonia was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio and the History Channel and was a radio-essayist with NPR in Chicago. Ana Castillo is editor of La Tolteca, an arts and literary ‘zine dedicated to the advancement of a world without borders and censorship and was on the advisory board of the new American Writers Museum, which opened its door in Chicago, 2017. In 2014 Dr. Castillo held the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University, River Forest, IL and served on the faculty with Bread Loaf Summer Program (Middlebury College) in 2015 and 2016. She also held the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University, The Martin Luther King, Jr Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at M.I.T. and was the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College in Utah in 2012, among other teaching posts throughout her extensive career. Ana Castillo holds an M.A from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D., University of Bremen, Germany in American Studies and an honorary doctorate from Colby College. She received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters. Her other awards include a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry. She was also awarded a 1998 Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago. Dr. Castillo’s So Far From God and Loverboys are two titles on the banned book list controversy with the TUSD in Arizona. 2013 Recipient of the American Studies Association Gloria Anzaldúa Prize to an independent scholar. via www.anacastillo.net

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

the antihero
always gets the woman
not in the end
an anticlimax instead
in the end
spits on her
stretched out body
a spasmatic carpet
yearning still
washes himself

doesn't know why
it is that way searching
not finding finding
not wanting wanting more
or nothing
in the end the key is
to leave her yearning lest
she discover that is all

[Sandy]

As a preface, I will likely add and or change my review once I’ve read this a few more times since poetry can’t really be judged completely after only reading it once.

The reason I bought myself a copy of this book was because I loved The Mixquiahuala Letters and it’s themes so much. In Women are not Roses, Castillo explores what it means to be a woman and the fluidity that is ignored but also inherent in that position. I feel very connected to the different themes she writes about including dreams, growing up, sadness/melancholy, relationships, class struggle, and the many other aspects that make up being a woman. I look forward to reading this again at some point and getting even more out of it than I already have.

I do also want to point out how much I love her use of languages and form to demonstrate the fluidity that is so central to this collection of poems. While I know English and Spanish, I was surprised to find French and Portuguese. And even though I don’t know the latter two I was fascinated by how she weaves through them at will in a very intentional way. The form was also very different from a lot of poetry that I have read before, using breaks in standard poetic format to either highlight certain moments or emphasize certain words or phrases. Just like Castillo is breaking boundaries in terms of what it means to be a woman, she is explores what defines poetry.