Ana Castillo is the author of the novels Peel My Love Like an Onion, So Far from God, The Mixquiahuala Letters, and Sapogonia. She has written a story collection, Loverboys; the critical study Massacre of the Dreamers; the poetry collection I Ask the Impossible; and the children's book My Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, the Dove. She is the editor of the anthology Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe, available from Vintage Español (La diosa de las Américas). Castillo has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award, a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Chicago. Find out more about Castillo at her homepage: www.anacastillo.com.

Mixing the lyrical with the colloquial, the tender with the tough, Ana Castillo has a deserved reputation as one of the country's most powerful and entrancing novelists, but she began her literary career as a poet of uncompromising commitment and passion. My Father Was a Toltec is the sassy and street-wise collection of poems that established and secured Castillo's place in the popular canon. It is included here in its entirety along with the best of her early poems.
Ana Castillo's poetry speaks—in English and Spanish—to every reader who has felt the pangs of exile, the uninterrupted joy of love, and the deep despair of love lost.