My Book of the Dead: New Poems

by Ana Castillo

For more than thirty years, Ana Castillo has been mesmerizing and inspiring readers from all over the world with her passionate and fiery poetry and prose. Now the original Xicanista is back to her first literary love, poetry, and to interrogating the social and political upheaval the world has seen over the last decade. Angry and sad, playful and wise, Castillo delves into the bitter side of our world—the environmental crisis, COVID-19, ongoing systemic racism and violence, children in detention camps, and the Trump presidency—and emerges stronger from exploring these troubling affairs of today. Drawings by Castillo created over the past five years are featured throughout the collection and further showcase her connection to her work as both a writer and a visual artist. My Book of the Dead is a remarkable collection that features a poet at the height of her craft.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 2021

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

[Denise Hatcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the opportunity to see Ana Castillo receive the Fuller Award for lifetime achievement on March 24,2022 thanks to some very good friends. In the process of attending this ceremony, I learned a great deal about this author who was born in Chicago in 1953 and attended the Chicago Public Schools. The poems in this book do solidify her extensive knowledge about so many historical events, her amazing talent as a writer, and her place as a very powerful woman who is also admired for her activism. She considers herself the first Xicanista.

The forty-eight poems in My Book of the Dead are divided into three parts. Sprinkled through out the text are images Ana drew. She explained that under Trump and during covid she drew, something she had always enjoyed doing, thinking she might never write again. Given the powerful messages in her poems, I am glad she has decided to continue to write. The poems in this book provide a realistic portrayal of where we are at today: discrimination, increasing violence, and a great divide. Ana Castillo magically weaves words into poems, encouraging her readers to think about themselves as well as the world around them.

[Caitlin]

My Book of the Dead is a thorny book, furious and beautiful, elegiac even as it demands action. Castillo’s anguish and her fury is raw and righteous, and reading it, in the time of COVID and ongoing collective grief, can be both difficult and cathartic. Castillo doesn’t turn away from the world’s ugliness, and she refuses to sugarcoat the lived realities of communities of color. But, even as My Book of the Dead cries out for action and breaks its readers’ hearts, it is a work of great, elegiac beauty, a perfect companion for this season filled with days of the dead.

My full review is available here: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2021/11/...

[Charlie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unimaginative with gratuitous Spanish and references to random places in Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. I have nothing against the author's views, but political poems need to be clever. The list of mass shootings one was eye-rollingly unoriginal, the autobiographical ones were boring and the ones about Trump were the literary equivalent of a political cartoon. I have seen better poems in a freshman English class.

[Anna Bowser · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I am spending a good portion of the year traveling, I made it a goal to read a book by an author from every country I visit. “My Book of the Dead” was what was available to me as an ebook for my time in Mexico. Honestly I wish I would have read something else. I have no other good way of saying that it was bad.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Totally devastating.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Truthteller with a strong voice who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is and speak truth to power.

Favorite Poems:
“Homage to Akilah”
“Othering”
“P.S. Bittersweet”
“Whitman”
“Detention”
“Wednesday Night in the Boogie Down Bronx”