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Black Dove: Mamá, Mi'jo, And Me

Growing up as the intellectually spirited daughter of a Mexican Indian immigrant family during the 1970s, Castillo defied convention as a writer and a feminist. A generation later, her mother's crooning mariachi lyrics resonate once again. Castillo—now an established Chicana novelist, playwright, and scholar—witnesses her own son's spiraling adulthood and eventual incarceration. Standing in the stifling courtroom, Castillo describes a scene that could be any mother's worst nightmare. But in a country of glaring and stacked statistics, it is a nightmare especially reserved for mothers like her: the inner-city mothers, the single mothers, the mothers of brown sons.Black Dove: Mamá, Mi'jo, and Me looks at what it means to be a single, brown, feminist parent in a world of mass incarceration, racial profiling, and police brutality. Through startling humor and love, Castillo weaves intergenerational stories traveling from Mexico City to Chicago. And in doing so, she narrates some of America's most heated political debates and urgent social injustices through the oft-neglected lens of motherhood and family.

Paperback: 350 pages

Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (May 10, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1558619232

ISBN-13: 978-1558619234

Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #271,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #51 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Parenting > Single Parents #257 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Parenting > Parenting Girls #582 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Motherhood

American author, essayist and poet Ana Castillo has had a storied and critically acclaimed career, garnering national recognition like the American Book Award given her first novel, a Carl Sandburg Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry and in 1998 Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago.In both her scholarly and creative work, Castillo has explored with unflinching truthfulness issues of race, gender, ethnicity, class and orientation. Perhaps most significant has been her tireless championing of what she terms Xicanisma, intersectional Chicana feminism in an increasingly backward and hostile political climate.Though she has taught classes on memoir writing down the years and mined her own life to craft her literary projects, Castillo had never written a truly autobiographical work until her latest book, Black Dove: Mamá, M’ijo and Me (The Feminist Press). The title is taken from the famous song “Paloma Negra,” composed by Tomás Méndez, the second line of which mourns “no sé si maldecirte o por ti rezar” (I don’t know whether to curse you or pray for you). These were the words Castillo’s mother said to her as she left, a rebellious youngster, to make her unique way in the world.This tension between mother and daughter infuses the emotionally charged reflections in Black Dove, as Castillo gradually comes to a hard-won understanding of the vicissitudes of (single) motherhood and a renewed respect for the struggles of poverty and racial tension Latinas face as they raise children in the United States.

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