Give It To Me
by Ana Castillo
Published by: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Imprint: The Feminist Press at CUNY
256 Pages, 5.50 x 8.00 x 0.00 in
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Recently divorced, Palma, a forty-three-year-old Latina, takes stock of her life when she reconnects with her gangster younger cousin recently released from prison. As she checks out her other options, her sexual obsession with her cous' ignites but their family secrets bring them together in unexpected ways. In this wildly entertaining and sexy novel, Ana Castillo creates a memorable character with a flare for fashion, a longing for family, and a penchant for adventure. Give It to Me is Sex in the City for a Chicana babe who's looking for love in all the wrong places.
Ana Castillo is one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Chicana literature. She is the author of So Far From God and Sapogonia, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, as well as The Guardians, Peel My Love like an Onion, and many other books of fiction, poetry, and essays. Her newest novel, Give It to Me won a 2014 LAMBDA Literary Award; her seminal collection, Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma was re-released as a 20th anniversary edition in November 2014; and the award-winning Watercolor Women, Opaque Men will be re-released in a new edition in the fall of 2016 by Northwestern University Press.
Castillo currently holds a faculty post at the Bread Loaf program with Middlebury College (VT). Previous teaching posts have included the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at MIT, the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College (UT), and the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University (IL) . Other awards include a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, and the Lifetime Achieve Award by Latina 50 Plus.
Castillo currently holds a faculty post at the Bread Loaf program with Middlebury College (VT). Previous teaching posts have included the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at MIT, the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College (UT), and the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University (IL) . Other awards include a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, and the Lifetime Achieve Award by Latina 50 Plus.
“Full of drama and gossip (because who doesn’t love chisme), this is a must-read for any chica in the process of finding her true self.” —Cosmopolitan
“Palma Piedras, 43 and divorced, tries on lovers of both sexes like a woman grabbing stilettos at a sample sale. She’s a Latina Moll Flanders, cheeky and passionate, clawing her way up from some very mean streets. Raw, funny and real.” —More
"In this gritty and entertaining novel, Ana Castillo paints a captivating portrait of a future that defies odds, questions stereotypes, and always maintains a sense of humor." —Elena Poniatowka, author of Massacre in Mexico
“Cheeky, amoral, and a gritty survivor, Palma Piedras is a picaresque heroine for the 21st century. With an unflinching satirical flare, Castillo creates a vivid cast of rogues and helpless characters who alarmingly resemble people we know.” —Jaime Manrique, author of Cervantes Street
“The novel is one-half sexual adventure, and one-half poignant search for love and meaning that are always found within. Palma is feisty and uninhibited, and unblinkingly realistic about herself and the world.” —Huffington Post Blog
"In Ana Castillo’s edgy new novel Give It to Me, no-holds barred Palma Piedras, ‘lone satellite orbiting in space,’ crash-lands on everybody’s heart. Palma’s escapades—erotic, sexy, comic and, by the end, devastating and poignant—illustrate how those who fling themselves onto love and desire are the same people who, at one time or another, must flee from it. An evocative page-turner." —Rigoberto González, author of Butterfly Boy, Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
“Through deadpan humor, impulsive characters, and a romp across America, Castillo’s absorbing novel is a search for twenty-first-century identity at a time when we find that very notion at its most unstable.” —Tony Valenzuela, executive director of the Lambda Literary Foundation
“In her new novel, Give It To Me, Castillo delivers a story that is both tawdry and transcendent. The sense of contemporary rootlessness chafes against deeply rooted Mexican-American culture creating a raw friction unlike any other story out there.” —Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories
“Give It To Me gives us a post-9/11, post-Bush, fast-talking, fast-walking multicultural, multiracial, multisexual panoply of characters... I thought I would die laughing.” —Cheryl Clarke, author of The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005
“The novel is a brave exploration of uninhibited feminine sexuality — at least on the surface. But it's also, in many ways, a great American novel, an examination of family, class issues and the search for happiness.” —Las Cruces Sun-News
“Full of drama and gossip (because who doesn’t love chisme), this is a must-read for any chica in the process of finding her true self.” —Cosmopolitan
“Palma Piedras, 43 and divorced, tries on lovers of both sexes like a woman grabbing stilettos at a sample sale. She’s a Latina Moll Flanders, cheeky and passionate, clawing her way up from some very mean streets. Raw, funny and real.” —More
"In this gritty and entertaining novel, Ana Castillo paints a captivating portrait of a future that defies odds, questions stereotypes, and always maintains a sense of humor." —Elena Poniatowka, author of Massacre in Mexico
“Cheeky, amoral, and a gritty survivor, Palma Piedras is a picaresque heroine for the 21st century. With an unflinching satirical flare, Castillo creates a vivid cast of rogues and helpless characters who alarmingly resemble people we know.” —Jaime Manrique, author of Cervantes Street
“The novel is one-half sexual adventure, and one-half poignant search for love and meaning that are always found within. Palma is feisty and uninhibited, and unblinkingly realistic about herself and the world.” —Huffington Post Blog
"In Ana Castillo’s edgy new novel Give It to Me, no-holds barred Palma Piedras, ‘lone satellite orbiting in space,’ crash-lands on everybody’s heart. Palma’s escapades—erotic, sexy, comic and, by the end, devastating and poignant—illustrate how those who fling themselves onto love and desire are the same people who, at one time or another, must flee from it. An evocative page-turner." —Rigoberto González, author of Butterfly Boy, Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
“Through deadpan humor, impulsive characters, and a romp across America, Castillo’s absorbing novel is a search for twenty-first-century identity at a time when we find that very notion at its most unstable.” —Tony Valenzuela, executive director of the Lambda Literary Foundation
“In her new novel, Give It To Me, Castillo delivers a story that is both tawdry and transcendent. The sense of contemporary rootlessness chafes against deeply rooted Mexican-American culture creating a raw friction unlike any other story out there.” —Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories
“Give It To Me gives us a post-9/11, post-Bush, fast-talking, fast-walking multicultural, multiracial, multisexual panoply of characters... I thought I would die laughing.” —Cheryl Clarke, author of The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005
“The novel is a brave exploration of uninhibited feminine sexuality — at least on the surface. But it's also, in many ways, a great American novel, an examination of family, class issues and the search for happiness.” —Las Cruces Sun-News
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