Writing in netantla: a celebrated Chicana author goes to the border.(TRANSFORMATIONS)(Ana Castillo)(Interview)

YET ANOTHER VOICE is weighing in on the fate of la frontera these days--but it's a poet, not a pundit. In her latest novel, The Guardians, the multi-genre writer Ana Castillo takes a look at life on the U.S.-Mexico border with sensitivity and imagination--qualities often sorely lacking in the immigration debate today. Told through the eyes of several characters, The Guardians explores the politics of the border with irony, lyricism and desert-spare clarity.

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Dubbed "the most daring and experimental of Latino novelists," Castillo also coined the term Xicanisma, or Chicana feminism, in her Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma. Her fearlessness and commitment to social justice are reflected in her critical and creative writings, as well as her history as a community activist. The prolific Chicago-born author garnered the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award for her novel The Mixquiahuala Letters, among many other honors.

Why did you write this book? Because I am a novelist and a writer, and the story came to me. I think with most novelists, you start out with an idea and then you decide whether you're going to be able to live with it for the next year or two or 10. And that's how it became a book.

What would Miguel (a character in The Guardians) say about the immigration bill that died this year? He'd have a whole lot to say about all that, obviously. For myself, I would say that we've had a guest worker program for the last 500 years. I don't think there's going to be much change unless you break down the borders altogether.

How did writing The Guardians transform you? I think by surrendering myself as I did to my characters at any point in time with any of my previous books as with this one, I do learn a lot. But how I'm transformed is spiritually, by going into the fictitious soul and life of another ...