Black Dove - by Ana Castillo (Paperback)

About the Book

Raised by immigrants and raising a brown son, Ana Castillo finds herself as a writer, feminist, and mother.

Book Synopsis

Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction

A lyrical memoir-in-essays by an award-winning Chicana writer: "the real power of Black Dove comes when it speaks to what mothers face raising black and brown children all across this nation." (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Growing up as the intellectually spirited daughter of a Mexican Indian immigrant family during the 1970s, Castillo defied convention as a writer and a feminist. A generation later, her mother's crooning mariachi lyrics resonate once again. Castillo--now an established Chicana novelist, playwright, and scholar--witnesses her own son's spiraling adulthood and eventual incarceration. Standing in the stifling courtroom, Castillo describes a scene that could be any mother's worst nightmare. But in a country of glaring and stacked statistics, it is a nightmare especially reserved for mothers like her: the inner-city mothers, the single mothers, the mothers of brown sons.

Black Dove: Mamá, Mi'jo, and Me looks at what it means to be a single, brown, feminist parent in a world of mass incarceration, racial profiling, and police brutality. Through startling humor and love, Castillo weaves intergenerational stories traveling from Mexico City to Chicago. And in doing so, she narrates some of America's most heated political debates and urgent social injustices through the oft-neglected lens of motherhood and family.

Review Quotes

"[Castillo] writes of her struggles with childhood poverty and the many obstacles that her family had to face on a daily basis. . . . It is a high-wire act to bring together a combination of personality characteristics and specific cultural touchstones and make it resonate with a wider readership, but the author handles it well. . . . A compassionate look at those crossing points in our shared lives." --Kirkus

"This exquisite memoir is full of compassion and maternal love." --NBC News

"Reading Black Dove is like sitting down to an intimate chat with Castillo about growing up with one foot in your parents' world and the other in your own. Thank you for this gift." --Veronica I. Arreola, founder of Viva La Feminista

"Órale! Castillo teaches us how to become the Latina sister outsider we all dream of being." --Ileana Jiménez, founder of Feminist Teacher

"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 Silver Sparrow

About the Author

Ana Castillo is one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Chicana literature. She is the author of So Far From God and Sapogonia, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, as well as The Guardians, Peel My Love like an Onion, and many other books of fiction, poetry, and essays. Her newest novel, Give It to Me won a 2014 LAMBDA Literary Award; her seminal collection, Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma was re-released as a 20th anniversary edition in November 2014; and the award-winning Watercolor Women, Opaque Men will be re-released in a new edition in the fall of 2016 by Northwestern University Press.

Castillo currently holds a faculty post at the Bread Loaf program with Middlebury College (VT). Previous teaching posts have included the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at MIT, the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College (UT), and the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University (IL) . Other awards include a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, and the Lifetime Achieve Award by Latina 50 Plus.