CHICAGO — For Ana Castillo, a Chicagoan known for her work as an author, educator, poet and activist, home is where her books are. Which, given the pandemic, means a home in the most southern point of New Mexico. Castillo was back in her hometown Thursday night to receive the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s Fuller Award at the American Writers Museum.
Inspired by the works of author Henry Blake Fuller, the award is given to a Chicago author who has made an outstanding lifetime contribution to literature. An honor bestowed on Chicago’s greatest living writers, Castillo rounds out the list of awardees at an even dozen.
“Chicago has informed me in so many ways,” Castillo said. “I grew up at a time before and during the civil rights movement. So, I have a very clear view of what my hometown has been, what it is and where it is now. I love the grounded sense in the Midwest. You can win the Nobel Prize and people (here) will say ‘that’s wonderful, you got this award, how are you paying your rent?’ All of that has made me who I am. No matter what, I have no hesitation and no grand errors about rolling up my sleeves and getting the work done and all that has to do with Chicago and the Midwest.”
We spoke with the editor of “La Tolteca 2.0″ (an arts and literary zine that features creatives of all backgrounds while focusing on the marginalized) prior to the event’s festivities. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q: You’ve been an advocate of Chicana feminism for years, aka “Xicanisma.” How is that applicable today with nonbinary people and other intersectionality?
A: I said it in the book (“Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma”) and I still feel that way. The book is about 30 years old and there was a 20th anniversary edition of it. I did some revisions, but the good news for me was that there wasn’t that much to revise. And the bad news for the world was that there wasn’t much to revise.
Labels serve us in our generation, in our time and personally, like a calling card. This is how I identify, just like pronouns — how should I refer to you? That being said, I’m not going to hold you to that 10 years from now. Times have changed or you have changed, and you have a right to do that. The important thing about a label is that you give it to yourself.
With Xicanisma, I was attempting at the time to assert an identity that existed. Sandra Cisneros and I were reading together in Chicago for many, many years. And we would laugh when people would say ‘oh two Chicanas, searching for their identity,’ wherever we would go. We weren’t searching for an identity, we knew our identity. We were asserting that identity. That’s what Xicanisma was trying to do at that point, to say: This is who we are. We’re complex. We’ve been around for a long time, many generations.
The U.S. and Mexico have had a conflictive relationship. There was a time when Texas was part of Mexico and there are people now that go back nine generations in Texas, not immigrants, they’re not migrants. And that was all part of the Chicana identity. Today, in many ways that still applies.
But I’m not holding anybody to what I said 30 years ago. Today, laws have changed, people have a different sense of identity. They’re welcome to add, subtract or multiply that but it gives a basis. And because I wrote the book and I did the research on it, if you argue about it, at least you have something to argue about. Debate it, at least there’s a foundation there. Prior to that, the conversation, the dynamic, the politic in the United States was black and white. And we had the whole Southwest that was just dismissed. With Xicanisma, that’s what I was trying to do and what my generation of Chicana writers and scholars were trying to get down in writing.
Q: You often write in English and Spanish in the same story without translating. Are readers more accepting of that today than when you first started out as a writer?
A: 100%, people are more into it. Why? Because there are now leagues of writers who are bilingual, not just Mexican American or Chicano, but from all different countries. We’ve had lots more immigration in the last 30-40 years from everywhere for a lot of reasons. They’re much more educated and because there was this legacy from my generation and from the 60s that was saying assert your identity; that is going on with a whole range of reasons of why people use the language that they use. I write in English, or I might write a poem in Spanish. The objective is to reach everybody, as many people as you can. And so, that’s where I’m at, and I’ve been for some time.
Q: In that pursuit to reach out to as many people as possible, are you making art outside of your writing?
A: In 2016, I was in shock, like so many, about the results of the election, I went into this dark place and by 2017, I had told myself there was no point in writing anymore. And how I was expressing myself was with drawing journals that I had laying around. ... I started drawing with Sharpie pens, and using various color pens and watercolor, and so on. While I was not writing, I was expressing myself in a million different ways. I have hundreds of drawings. Some of them I have sold. I put some on my website and I’ve sold to some people who’ve asked about them and collect work. One was on a cover of a literary journal in Turkey. ... It’s not on the front burner, in terms of promoting or looking for a place to exhibit. But I think it’s very safe to say that you may be seeing more of my artwork in the future, my artwork and perhaps my artwork with my writing.
Q: A Lifetime Achievement Award, but you’re still so young. What else do you want to accomplish? Do you have a to-do list?
A: As far as being honored by these organizations. It’s not for me to say. You work very hard; if you’re recognized in your life that’s the cherry on the topping, but you work at it because you believe in it and for many women and for many people of color and people who are marginalized in one way or the other, a major aim of our ambition and our work comes from a collective place. I am not trying to say that I represent this group or that group, but this group and that group have not been represented or have been underrepresented. And so we would love to see ourselves in stories and in print and on-screen. And just in all the different places that represent our society, in government.
Everyone wants to be recognized. Everyone would like to see the belief that they’ll be immortalized in some way. And I feel that in my own way, I surpassed that. I didn’t study writing. I didn’t have any writing career ambitions. I didn’t go home at 20 years old, saying ‘hey, I’m gonna be a poet’ to my factory working parents. I’ve surpassed that a long time ago. But those other things that are on the outside world that would be lovely and wonderful, and I feel in my heart, long after I’m gone, that will happen. I’m so grateful that my hometown has acknowledged and welcomed and embraced my presence and my efforts for many years now. It was more than I had ever expected — anything after that, I’ll keep working and we’ll see what happens.
