PARA PAR@ ` ,TEXT ` Castillo, Ana1953╨ poet and novelistBorn on June 15, 1953, in Chicago, Ana Hernandez del Castillo was the daughter of Mexican-American parents who migrated from the Southwest to Chicago. She graduated from Northeastern Illinois University in 1975 with a degree in art education. There she became involved in Latino artistic, activist and intellectual circles of the 1970s, joining such organizations as the Latino Brotherhood of Artists and the Movimiento Artistico Chicano. She was part of the groundswell of Latina writers in the U.S. exploring their ethnic identities through the lens of sexual politics and their sexual politics through their ethnic origins.During this period, her interest in writing and peforming poetry grew, and her first collection of poems, Otro Canto, 1977, was published as a chapbook with the help of a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Two years later, shortly after receiving an M.A. in social sciences from the University of Chicago, she published a second chapbook, The Invitation, 1979, in which female speakers described the experience of the erotic in their own terms. Her work then took a theatrical turn. From 1981 to 1982 she created and managed the Al Andalus flamenco performance troupe. She also adapted The Invitation to music, and the poems were performed at the 1982 Soho Art Festival in New York City. In 1983 her play, Clark Street Counts was performed by the Chicana Raza Group.Castillo╒s work draws on the sometimes contradictory political influences of militant ethnic and economic struggles and feminist and lesbian perspectives. Otro Canto took a revolutionary Marxist stance on the plight of the urban poor. Women are not Roses, 1984, explored the difficulties of poor and working class women who must choose between devoting their energies to erotic relationships or to class struggle. Castillo characterized these arenas as feminine and masculine, respectively, and looks at how women claim their own sexuality as they negotiate between them. The Mixquiahuala Letters, 1986, extended her exploration of Latina women╒s attempts to appropriate their sexuality, and of the reactions of men in the Anglo and Latino communities to these attempts. Written in an experimental form, the novel consists of letters sent over 10 years between two Latina women, arranged to be read in three different versions for three different types of reader: ╥The Conformist,╙ ╥The Cynic,╙ and ╥The Quixotic.╙Castillo╒s other works included Zero Makes Me Hungry, 1975, and My Father was a Toltec, 1988, two collections of poetry. She was also the editor, with CherriÄ Moraga, of the 1988 Spanish language edition of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which she translated with Norma Alarcon. In 1993 she published another novel, So Far from God. ╩styl ` # ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ + !I ó 5¬ ú !I !I !I · !I !I e 5¬ f !I ⌡ !I !I n !I ü !I ½ 5¬ ¼ !I I !I S !I Ü !I ¡ !I ε 5¬ ∩ !I !I ½ 5¬ ¼ !I ╦ !I α !I ∞ !I
