Border Lines

En español | During her 30-year career, award-winning Mexican American writer Ana Castillo has been recognized for rendering characters with unflinching honesty buttressed by a strong feminist sensibility. This trademark continues in The Guardians (August 2007).

Meet Regina, a 50-plus widow who is going through “the change” and struggling to make ends meet. Says Castillo, 54, “A lot happens to women after 50. Not 40, not 30, but after 50 the world begins to look at us with different eyes.”

Life gets more difficult when Regina is left to raise her nephew after her brother vanishes trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border. The quest to find her brother sets in motion a chain of events populated by a varied cast. “All those people are parts of me, but they’re also a part of a mass consciousness. And that’s what becomes the secret to the success of a story,” the author says.

Read our exclusive interview with Ana Castillo.