When I hear that Jennifer Lopez is such a role model for Latinas, on the one hand I respect her for her business sense and I respect her for her ambition. But she's in the entertainment world. She's done it on her looks and very specifically on her anatomy. Madonna is also considered a great businesswoman and so is Yoko Ono. I feel if I had a young daughter right now, I would feel a little discouraged if that was my daughter's primary role model for success and for young people, for Latinas and Latinos.
Ana CastilloAccording to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals--just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women.
Ana CastilloThe language in New Mexico is very different. At first when you hear the speech here, you don't really know what to do with it, but then I just went with it, because as a writer as well as a translator I do believe that translated words are not different names for the same thing. They're different names for different things. I tried to stay as true as I could, so I used Ruben Cobos' dictionary of Southwestern Spanish, and when I went into Spanish I never assumed the word I would use would be the word a nuevomexicano would use.
Ana CastilloWhen I devoted myself to poetry - and poetry is a very serious medium - I don't think the people that knew me as an individual with that tongue-in-cheek kind of humor...well, it didn't always lend itself to my poetry. When you're writing poetry, it's like working with gold, you can't waste anything. You have to be very economical with each word you're going to select. But when you're writing fiction, you can just go on and on; you can be more playful. My editor's main task is to cut back, not ask for more.
Ana Castillo