The other end of the shelf is \u201cDo\u00f1a Cleanwell Leaves Home,\u201d Castillo\u2019s latest collection of stories. I feel lucky to be the reviewer again and write again for this publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Castillo has been busy publishing an ongoing stream of well-regarded books, in the intervening years. \u201cDo\u00f1a Cleanwell Leaves Home\u201d suggests there is no risk of her running out of stories to tell. The idea that she has not shared everything is key to interpreting the stories.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/eltecolote.org\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Ana-Castillo_Joe-Ramos.jpeg?resize=868%2C1200&quality=89&ssl=1\")
In \u201cDo\u00f1a Cleanwell Leaves Home,\u201d she spills out seven tales to charm readers, old and new. They are the tales of a practiced storyteller. To her, there are no boring incidents, no characters without an element of charm, and no story without tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I admire the writer who creates these elements from the building blocks of daily life. Though there are whiffs of the supernatural, most of the suspense comes from people with recognizable experiences. They are not fantasy or living tales ripped from the headlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tension in \u201cDo\u00f1a Cleanwell Leaves Home\u201d comes from the everyday unknowns. Telling stories means being as careful about what you leave out, as you are with what you put in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Missing information spices a story, but what you don\u2019t know can<\/em> hurt you. Castillo\u2019s protagonists are often in a funk, precisely because of what they don\u2019t know. At the same time, there is fear that learning the truth will be just as painful as not knowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stories are a litany of not knowing. \u201cDad never talked about it,\u201d is one such line in \u201cCuernavaca,\u201d the opening story. Here, the narrator seeks to fill in holes in her father\u2019s oft-recited narrative about going to Mexico as the young drummer in a band. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Do\u00f1a Cleanwell\u2019s story, Katia is a girl on the verge of adulthood who makes a trip to Mexico to retrieve her absent mother, having no idea what awaits her. Her mother\u2019s few phone calls to the kids she left in the U.S. have offered no clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Castillo writes: \u201cWhenever one or another asked why she left, what she was doing in Mexico or if she was coming back, the woman remarked that the bill was running up and cut it short.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Katia\u2019s trip upends her young concepts of life; of what is right, of what is feminist, and even of what is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In \u201cVen,\u201d the unknown consists of a brother\u2019s quest to understand his sister, who died too young. Can he bring her past research trips to Mexico into focus? What was the role of the mysterious man she knew there? The narration speaks his mind: \u201cWhy had she not told her brother she\u2019d heard from Rigo? Why never mention him again?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reader, as well, is pulled along by the stories\u2019 incomplete nature. There are gaps in what Castillo tells us. Sometimes, the partial picture we have reflects the protagonist\u2019s ignorance of what is going on. Sometimes, Castillo is content to leave us in the dark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What motivated a friend\u2019s vengeful act of betrayal? What really happened in the library? Why does a woman decide to live with her husband\u2019s infidelity? I read the stories, but I don\u2019t have answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is up to us to complete the story, just as we have responsibility for our own lives. In the end, all stories are incomplete, partial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Life is too complicated (and sometimes too boring) to tell people everything. Moreover, there is always something that comes after the book is closed. Life continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that last sense, this review is a temporary bookend. \u201cDo\u00f1a Cleanwell\u201d is only the provisional end of the shelf. Castillo\u2019s imagination shows no signs of letting up, and we can expect more of her work for the bookcase. She already has a novel due out next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thirty-six years ago, I noted that \u201cMixquiahuala Letters\u201d held out \u201cthe promise of a rich, universal literature based on the life of Chicanas and Chicanos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, writers have broken out of the boxes of Chicanx literature\/feminism\/xicanisma that can be descriptive, but limiting. What Castillo and others have accomplished is to demonstrate to the literary world that our stories are indeed \u201crich, universal literature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Castillo is top shelf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This review is a bookend on the shelf. On one end of the shelf is 1987, when I was an El Tecolote employee and reviewed Ana Castillo\u2019s first novel, \u201cThe Mixquiahuala Letters.\u201d I loved it and felt lucky to meet her at the now-gone Caf\u00e9 Nidal near the [former] Acci\u00f3n Latina office. The other end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":56753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18626],"tags":[24010,24013],"coauthors":[24012],"class_list":["post-56750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-ana-castillo","tag-dona-cleanwell-leaves-home-stories","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n