As time has gone on and we're at the end of the 20th century and major publishing is a big business, yes, of course we're going to get a lot of plain, mediocre trash. There are a lot of writers who get huge advances for books that don't go anywhere and they have to burn them somewhere or throw them away. I always think about all the poor trees that have been sacrificed.
Ana CastilloI wanted everything. What could you not want when you are brown and Indian-looking in a society in which the white aesthetic is praised as acceptable?
Ana CastilloPeople like to think of themselves as purists, but there is no such thing as purity, when there exists so much contact.
Ana CastilloI think the possibilities are endless in terms of what the genre would be like. However, in terms of looking for sources of money, I think we have to be very careful not to fall into Hollywood's commodification of Chicano culture. We could look at the example of Piri Thomas, a successful Puerto Rican writer now living in the Bay Area, who has received repeated offers from Hollywood...and he said he's not going to write about his people doing drugs and going to jail.
Ana Castillo