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My Father Was a Toltec: And Selected Poems : 1973 1988

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To begin with, I will announce that this wonderful collection is coming back out in print. This came to my attention in my panic to get copies for a class I am teaching on Women of Color poets. These are the poems of an original voice. If anyone with a sense of the struggle of Mexicans in this country reads this book and remained unmoved I would wonder if they had a soul. Much more powerful, is the powerful message of a woman whose voice was previously unheard. Castillo's internal assonance, her skill as a poet to make the most difficult moves look easy on the page is among her assets as a poet out of this generation of activists. The fact that Castillo's later success with her novels "seemed so easy" is actually an indication of how she perseveres. I will continue to use this collection until retirement and then I will pass it on to my grandchildren--to remember that it wasn't easy at all.

To begin with, I will announce that this wonderful collection is coming back out in print. This came to my attention in my panic to get copies for a class I am teaching on Women of Color poets. These are the poems of an original voice. If anyone with a sense of the struggle of Mexicans in this country reads this book and remained unmoved I would wonder if they had a soul. Much more powerful, is the powerful message of a woman whose voice was previously unheard. Castillo's internal assonance, her skill as a poet to make the most difficult moves look easy on the page is among her assets as a poet out of this generation of activists. The fact that Castillo's later success with her novels "seemed so easy" is actually an indication of how she perseveres. I will continue to use this collection until retirement and then I will pass it on to my grnadchildren--to remember it wasn't easy at all.

Since the time this book of poems first came out in 1988 it has spoken to me. I am not the daughter of a Toltec but of an Ottoman Yet, I related. I discovered the book in a bookstore in Berkeley in the eighties. While I felt so far from home, I connected with the poems that spoke of a daughter's yearning for her father's power in such a modest way, in such modest ways. I found the copy I brought back with me the other day which I thought I had lost. I will pass it on to my daughter.