Ana Castillo, award-winning Chicana author, is a woman who wears her many roles and talents with extraordinary grace. She has published 15 books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition, she is a feminist scholar, painter, single mother and cultural healer. This fall, she will add a new entry to her list of accomplishments as she begins a five-year appointment as a writer-in-residence at DePaul University.

“This is an important hire for the college, for our Latino students and faculty, and for the Latino community in Chicago,” said Michael L. Mezey, dean of DePaul’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “Ana is one of the most significant American writers of our time. She is an acclaimed poet, novelist, essayist, editor and translator and her work is taught in college classrooms around the country. Her presence at DePaul will strengthen our curricula in writing and in Latin American/Latino Studies and will enhance the learning experience of all of our students.”

Castillo, 47, was one of the strongest voices to emerge from the Latino nationalist movement of the late seventies. It was her involvement in the political empowerment of Latinos that helped to shape her feminist values. “All the movements – Black, Jewish – that were so prevalent at the time had the same problem,” Castillo said. “The leadership was the men, and women were relegated to secondary, behind the scenes roles even though we were doing most of the footwork and the important work, like writing grants and speeches.”

A disappointed and disillusioned Castillo purged her feelings through her writing. She had already self-published her first book of poetry, “Otro Canto,” an examination of socio-political oppression of Third World women and men. In 1979, she self-published “The Invitation,” a response to the sexism of Latino men with whom she had been aligned. “I did an about-face, became reflective, went to graduate school and had a feminist workshop with myself, which at the time was happening all over the country with women activists of my generation, although many of the like-minded Latinas were not yet aware of each other,” she said.

Castillo’s sense of injustice was pricked as a youngster growing up on the near West Side of Chicago. “My parents sent me to Jones Commercial Girls High School to learn to type because they thought I’d make a good secretary,” she recalled. After completing high school, Castillo, who had aspirations beyond the secretarial pool, immediately enrolled in a community college where she planned to study sociology and art.

While there, her passion for poetry was sparked and she began to express her political views through her prose. She opted not to attend the neighboring University of Illinois at Chicago because of the displacement the university created in her community during the 1960s. Instead, she earned her bachelor’s degree in liberal arts at Northeastern Illinois University. Castillo went on to earn a master’s degree in Latin and Caribbean Studies from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. with honors from the University of Bremen.

Her fifth book of poetry, “I Ask the Impossible” was released this year. Other recent works are a novel, “Peel My Love Like an Onion,” and a children’s book, “My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, The Dove.”

Castillo said she prefers fiction to non-fiction and names poetry as her favorite form of literature because “one can be very opinionated” and because “you don’t have to qualify things – it’s so because you say so.” She is currently working on a book entitled “Spirit, Sex, Eternal Love,” which will be published next year. Castillo’s book of essays, “Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma,” won the 1995 Gustaves Myers Award for outstanding book on human rights. She has garnered numerous critical citations for her books, among them the 1993 Carl Sandburg Literary Award in Fiction for her novel, “So Far From God.” Most recently, her children’s book received a commendation award from the national Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs.

A speaker in great demand, Castillo travels extensively about four months out of the year on book tours and the academic lecturer’s circuit. She has been affiliated with more than 20 colleges and universities during the past 25 years, most recently as a guest lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley and as a professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. This year, Southwest Texas State University honored her with its “Latin Legend” award.

She and her son, Marcel, who is a senior at Lincoln Park High School, lived for five years in Albuquerque before returning to Chicago when her mother became ill five years ago. After Castillo’s mother died, her son expressed an interest in staying on in Chicago where he had cultivated close ties to the city. Settling once more in Castillo’s hometown seems to have been beneficial for mother and son. Her spacious, bi-level apartment is filled with her paintings, mostly self-portraits. Painting, Castillo said, has helped her to survive the periods of hibernation necessitated by Chicago’s cold winters.

It was Castillo’s role as a mother that actually led to her coming to DePaul. When Marcel expressed an interest in pursuing his college education at DePaul, Castillo began a dialogue with with friends at the university and soon decided that DePaul was a good match for her as well. She considers DePaul, the largest Catholic university in the United States, “essential to the Chicago intellectual community.”

Castillo’s own spiritual beliefs are tied to her ethnic roots. Her paternal grandmother was a curandera, which in Spanish means “healer,” someone akin to a medicine woman in the community. According to Castillo, the curandera draws on her patient’s faith and uses organic extracts to help balance the mental, spiritual, emotional and physical selves of the person. Castillo’s grandmother taught her the art more than 20 years ago, and on a trip to Mexico, in 1997, Castillo was initiated to practice herself. “I find that today people want a connection with our traditions. We want something that speaks to us personally. These traditional practices and Christian religious heritage connect with Judaism, Islam and old African beliefs,” she explained.

In her communication with college students around the country, particularly young, Chicanas, Castillo has found that it’s important to bring positive affirmation. “I think students see that I am not just a groovy poet and a feminist,” she said with a smile. “I come from a Catholic background, so I’m not so alienated from them. I believe in a holistic approach as a role model – teacher, therapist, healer – all designed to nurture young people as leaders for the future. It’s important to recognize that not everyone can be Jennifer Lopez or wants to be.”