Abstract
In this paper, the various types of curanderismo healing process within Castillo's novel reflect the magical realism, which is often unscientific and fictional in nature. Castillo reveals the ways that curandera's apply their healing process with oils, prayers, and even trance states to invoke their clients into being healed without any means of scientific inquiry. These methods seem impractical and do not truly provide a sense of healing, which is one reason why Castillo provides much of the subjectivity of these healing processes part of limited and cruel patriarchal values imposed on women.

From the Paper
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Tags:castillo, empacho, healing

Abstract
The paper explores how Ana Castillo overcomes the obstacles of the Latino patriarchal cultural restrictions and Latino Catholicism in presenting her Latino characters. The paper highlights the notion of home in Castillo's story and how Castillo deals with the men in the story. The paper shows us how, using the tool of magical realism, Castillo succeeds in creating a bond between women characters and readers.

Outline:
Introduction
Freeing the Women in So Far From God
The Home
Magical Realism
The Men in So Far From God
Conclusion

From the Paper
"Right away Castillo helps the reader to understand how she will move past the restrictions of the patriarchal society placed on her female Latino characters. The key is the use of humor, and by taking those situations which are, in the life of Latino women, consistent as identifiers of their role in their society. The reality of the Latino culture suggests that the women, Sofi and her four daughters, around whom this story unfolds, should be in the background, while their male counterparts are in the foreground of the story. Castillo quickly dispels this cultural norm with humor, and also with the magical realism of one daughter, the second daughter, Caridad, whose dream in life it is to have a storybook wedding to her fiance, Tom. With this character, the second daughter, Castillo is conforming to the traditional Latino values, which she must do in exchange for the leeway she will take later in the story. The sacrifice of the second daughter to the traditions of her Latino culture come later, after Castillo has first taken what she needs as a fiction writer to move her story beyond the traditions."

Tags:patriarchy, culture, men, Latino, Catholicism, stereotypes

From the Paper
"Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters is a novel about the difficulty of friendship in which the shared past of two women, Alicia and Teresa, is recounted and reflected on in letters from Teresa. But this simple description belies the wealth of complications in the novel; not the least of which is the breakdown of the friendship or, at least, of the communication between the pair. For, despite the intensity of the connection over the decade they have known each other, the letters from Teresa make it clear that the two women have, in the long run, missed each other--in the sense of never having managed to fully comprehend each other. The immediately apparent cause of this failed connection is the random noise generated by patriarchal power plays that seems to clutter up their channels of communication. The problem, however, also casts a wider net."

From the Paper
"Sofi had devoted her life to being a good daughter, a good wife, and a good mother, or at least had given it all a hell of a good try . . . Now there was no mother to honor, no father to respect, no 'jitas to sacrifice for, no rancho to maintain, and no land left to work (Castillo 218).
The purpose of this research is to examine the transforming character of Sofi in So Far from God by Ana Castillo. The plan of the research will be to set forth the cultural and social context in which Sofi can be seen as shaping her identity from her environment and family history. Also discussed will be psychological implications Castillo's portrayal of mother-daughter relationships--especially how human relationships are shaped by the response to unique cultural forces.

In a way, Sofi is defined by a social environment of women and.."

Abstract
In this article, the writer studies the book 'Massacre of the Dreamers' by the novelist, poet, and Chicana activist, Ana Castillo. The writer notes that Castillo offers an explicitly nationally and ethnically based form of feminism for Latina women that the author calls Xicanisma. The writer discusses that over the course of Castillo's historiography of the Chicana and feminist movements, Castillo combines personal as well as historical testimony to create a political and spiritual manifesto for Latina women today. Further the writer shows that Castillo condemns both the racism and negative assumptions that have limited Latina women from assuming power within their culture, even while she pays tribute to the considerable successes and accomplishments of Latinas in various Mexican activist movements.

From the Paper
"Castillo is equally unsparing when condemning the misogyny of Mexican culture, even in its most radical forms, such as the American Chicano Movement. Beyond the ideologies of Catholicism and Communism that have denied the gender imbalance within the Mexican community and society, Castillo believes Chicana women must band together to articulate and find ways of healing and addressing their unique difficulties as a community. Only then will the feminine principle as well as machismo endemic to contemporary Mexican life once again find its space within Latino culture and spirituality."
"Castillo, however, does not deny the common assertion of the American women's movement that the personal is political. She states she had to look within herself to get beyond the dichotomies of masculine and feminine that hampered her ability to see herself fully as an activist, sexual being, and a spiritual female being."

Tags:Latina, women, Xicanisma, Mexican, culture

Abstract
In this article, the writer studies the story 'So Far From God' by Ana Castillo. The writer notes that in "So Far From God", Castillo sets her work in Chicana country, and creates a mystical work of fiction that draws the reader into the story, making it nearly impossible to set down. The writer looks at the various characters in the book and then discusses the different themes of the story. Further the writer notes that the style of writing is somewhat disjointed and strange, almost like Castillo is just telling a story aloud to a friend instead of creating a novel. The writer concludes that the endurance of the human spirit and the female spirit, is what Castillo is trying to show to the readers of this particular book.

From the Paper
"The themes that are presented in the book must be discussed in some detail, because they are very important and significant. Each theme of the book revolves around one of the five female characters. Sofia, the mother, embodies the great wisdom that is seen in some individuals. She goes through so much, but she manages to retain her sanity and her sense of humor, both of which she feels are very important. The wisdom theme appears to be at the core of what Castillo is trying to show. There are, however, other themes and ideas that are embodied by the four daughters."
"Esperanza, who is the most liberated of all of the sisters, spends her college years involved with the Chicano movement and tries to better many people's lives. Despite how helpful and kind she is, she is killed covering the Gulf Crisis as a reporter for a television station. Her death is largely meaningless, and it leaves the reader without any kind of way to find redemption in the death of this character."

Tags:Chicana, female, sisters, women

Abstract
This paper examines how Ana Castillo adopts folkloric and fantastical tone in her novel "So Far From God" and makes the reader feel as if he or she is part of the community life of the novel. It discusses how the novel is told in the voice of a third-person narrator who does not directly participate in the actions and how the narrator tells the reader, like a neighborhood gossip, what will transpire over the course of the chapter, as in a folktale rather than a novel.

From the Paper
"The fact that many of the characters have allegorical names, like the main protagonist's Sofi's daughters, Charity, Hope, and Faith (Caridad, Esperanza, and Fe) intensifies this sense that this is a tale of unconventional structure, like a fable with no moral, rather than a conventional novel focused on the development and evolution of a single character. Just like characters listen to tales told by wise, old women of the community like the centenarian Felicia, the reader listens to the narrator, uncertain of whether to trust her moral judgment, even when assured that the facts of the events are true. "

Tags:Sofi, felicia, faith, hope, charity

Abstract
From the very first pages of "So Far From God" author Ana Castillo creates a place in which the female characters can choose to triumph over the men who try to hold them back. This paper also clearly details the plot and main characters in the novel as well as the author's unique use of imagery and spirituality.

From the Paper
"Esperanza also gives herself up to the patriarchy in some ways, but she ultimately prevails over it as she wanders the earth, finally becoming the messenger that she wanted to be. After receiving her Master's degree in communications and landing a job at the local television station, Esperanza passes up a promotion to a larger market to rekindle a relationship with her ex. When that doesn't work out, she goes to an even better market, Washington D.C., where her dangerous assignment in the Middle East leads to her torture and murder. But it isn't Esperanza's fate to just be dead. She returns to the family as a spirit force, offering hope and comfort to her mother as she had once done for her."

Tags:literature, review, women, spirituality, feminism

Abstract
In the novel, "Peel My Love Like an Onion" by Ana Castillo, the author addresses a number of issues related to immigration and the position of minorities in American life. In addition, she addresses issues of loss and separation from both people and other aspects of life. The paper shows that the love referred to in the title is both the love the protagonist has had for the two men in her life and also the love she once had for her chosen profession of Flamenco dancer, a love lost because of her polio and its crippling effects. The paper shows how she, in fact, becomes separated from everything she values in life, suggesting much about those in society who are cast aside for any reason and who then live desperate lives simply trying to survive.

From the Paper
"There is a great difference between the working conditions Carmen experiences as a dancer and those she encounters in a series of smaller jobs she has to take later in order to survive, but there are similarities a well. There is a metaphor of servitude that runs through the novel, whether it be servitude to a demanding teacher like Agustin or to the system itself as she tries to survive in low-paid jobs in a society that places little value on people from Mexico, little value on women, and little value on those who have to do these low-paid and dead-end jobs that society may need but never really values."

Tags:Carmen, Chicana, Bizet

Abstract
The paper demonstrates how, using the tool of magical realism, Castillo is able to break down the confinements of Hispanic patriarchal systems and free the characters from those bounds so that they can become individuals. The paper examines how Castillo creates the world of Sofi, a single mother with four daughters, La Loca and her three sisters; Esperanza, Caridad and Fe. The paper describes how since the sisters are liberated from their patriarchal Hispanic traditions with magical realism, they can now resolve their relationship problems that take place in a white, and not Hispanic, world.

Outline:
Introduction
The Story of Women

From the Paper
"The relationships between men and women in Ana Castillo's (1993) So Far From God, are unlike relationships between most Hispanic men and women, because Castillo takes her characters out of the patriarchal confines of Hispanic tradition. To do this, Castillo employs "magical realism," which is the author's liberty to take the characters out of that restrictive, repressive mode of Hispanic patriarchal domination, and to explore their feelings, emotions, and personalities free of those restrictions, which would otherwise prohibit us from knowing the character as deeply as we can, and as deeply as the author wants us to know them."

Tags:patriarchy, magical, realism, relationships, marriages