En español | Acclaimed author Ana Castillo's new book The Guardians will be available June 31, 2007. She answers our questions on layers of meaning, borders, the American Dream, and getting better with age.
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How would you describe The Guardians to those who are unfamiliar with your work?
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My work—which includes novels, poetry, and nonfiction—isn’t easy to put in a box or describe in 25 words or less. What we can find is some consistency in my characters, who are almost exclusively Latino, and a sensitivity to the political times and needs of Latinos in this country. In The Guardians I didn’t start out thinking, “Let me write something that’s a hot-button issue right now.” But because I was residing along the United States-Mexican border, it just seemed like natural subject matter for me. The book is about the violence along the border, immigration issues, and migration issues specific to Mexicans and Americans.
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The Guardians is an apt title with many levels of interpretation. Can you explain the title’s resonance throughout the novel?
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The first reason for the title was visceral. It just came to me during the opening of the story when our main character Regina is reflecting on the mountains that she can see from her window, and she talks about them like they are great spirits. So those are my first guardians. In terms of the other layers, I’ll let the readers decide for themselves. But what I would say is it can be interpreted as, sometimes in the process of protecting one thing, you expose something else to danger. So I started seeing that as a natural title for what I saw being played out along the border.
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Along those lines, the dedication of the book reads: “To all working for a world without borders and to all who dare to cross them.” How did this centralizing idea of borders become such a force in your novel?
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I had started to make my home along the U.S.-Mexican border, and every day during the warm and hot seasons I saw workers recruited and brought out to work in the fields. It was in my mind as a potential story to tell. It’s natural for me to empathize with the underdog because of my own background. My parents were factory workers, so I’m sensitive to the issues of the people who don’t get full representation in this country.
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In your view, what is the current state of the American Dream?
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I was teaching in Chicago last year on May 1 when we had the big protest, and something like 700,000 people were outside by noon. They were not just Mexican, Latino, or undocumented people. Chicago, like all of this country, is filled with immigrants. These people are hoping for a piece of the pie, a slice of the American Dream. As it stands, people basically are looking for a way to survive, to have a better life, to take care of their families. That’s basically what everybody is hoping for to one degree or another—you can’t hold that against anyone.
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The main character Regina is a smart, independent, 50-plus widowed virgin. How did you arrive at her character?
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Sometimes I get so many voices in my head I don’t know where they come from initially, and when they start talking the challenge is to find out who they are and what’s their story. Regina came to me one morning unpremeditated when I was looking at those same mountains. The question for novelists and fiction writers is: “Is it autobiographical, is this you?” And indeed, she in part is me. I am 50-plus, but I am also a part of [all the other characters in the novel]. That’s the real trick, all those people are parts of me, but they’re also a part of a mass consciousness, and that’s what becomes the secret of the success of the story—that so many people can relate to it.
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