Ana Castillo

Eilidh AB Hall (University of Aberdeen)

Ed. by Nuala Finnegan, University College Cork
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.7: Chicano/Latino Writing and Culture of the United States.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Nuala Finnegan (University College Cork), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Lori Oxford (Western Carolina University)

Dates

Born 15 Jun 1953
Activity 1977-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Latino/a US-American

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Novelist
Poet

Resources

Castillo's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Ana Castillo is a poet, novelist, short story writer, editor, playwright, translator, and independent scholar. Born and raised in Chicago, of Mexican American heritage, Castillo’s work deals with the plurality and complexity of the Chicana experience. Through the praxis of ‘Xicanisma’ that she develops in her 1994 work

Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma

, Castillo explores her version of Chicana feminism that reinserts the “forsaken feminine” into political consciousness (Massacre 12). Xicanisma calls for a reclamation of

indigenismo

and the use of the ‘x’ in the spelling of ‘Xicanisma’ pays homage to Castillo’s indigenous roots by incorporating the Nahuatl language of the Mexica who use the ‘x’ to signify ‘ch’ (Massacre 12). In the essay “A…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2026 words

Citation: Hall, Eilidh AB. "Ana Castillo". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 July 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5896, accessed 20 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here