My Book of the Dead

She’s got a lot to tackle—the Trump era, the border crisis, environmental threats, racially motivated violence—but these declarative, crackling poems confront their subjects with wit and grace, in English and Spanish. Molly Boyle and Kate Nelson, New Mexico Magazine

The critical spirit of Xicanisma animates [Ana Castillo’s] latest poetry collection.…This is quintessential Castillo. Diego Báez, Booklist

With a sharp eye and even sharper wordplay, the poems radiate with emotion, from anger to heartbreak.… My Book of the Dead is a striking poetry collection that honors the lost, both known and unknown. Dontaná McPherson-Joseph, Foreword Reviews

Ana Castillo offers us the consolations of poetry in the face of current crises of incipient neofascism, entrenched racism, surveillance states, financial inequality, and precarity.…I am awed by the scale, depths, stretches, bilingual inflections, and powerful ironies of her words that are more necessary than ever in our traumatized world. Azade Seyhan, author of Heinrich Heine and the World Literary Map: Redressing the Canon

These are poems that will immerse you in the various rhythms of life and death—while also reminding us of the rage, joys, sorrows, desires, and dolores of both. Francisco J. Galarte, author of Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies

In My Book of the Dead you do not delve into the sweet hereafter as if in a level of Dante’s Hell, but into the mystical, magical realism breathing life into the quiescence of the everlasting moment of the here and now, caught up in the impossible duende of a poet whose every palabra celebrates and embraces la vida. The Egyptians may have had Osiris, but we have Ana Castillo and her honey for Oshun. Tony Medina, author of Death, With Occasional Smiling

Ana Castillo’s latest work, My Book of the Dead, is a powerful testament to strength and resilience. Its historical references to the struggles our communities have endured and its addressing of political perils and climate crises are lessons needed for this time. Nancy Mercado, author of It Concerns the Madness