Mixing the lyrical with the colloquial, the tender with the tough, Ana Castillo has a deserved reputation as one of the country’s most powerful and entrancing novelists, but she began her literary career as a poet of uncompromising commitment and passion. My Father Was a Toltec is the sassy and street-wise collection of poems that established and secured Castillo's place in the popular canon. It is included here in its entirety along with the best of her early poems.

Ana Castillo’s poetry speaks—in English and Spanish—to every reader who has felt the pangs of exile, the uninterrupted joy of love, and the deep despair of love lost. “If you have read Ana Castillo’s work before, you will not be disappointed. If you have not read Castillo before—where have you been?” —Houston Chronicle

“Ana Castillo is immensely insightful in every sense of the word. Her work…must be read if one is to gain understanding of the landscape of the soul.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes