Content Warning: This section discusses femicide.

Ana Castillo is a Chicana novelist, poet, essayist, editor, playwright, translator, independent scholar, and short story writer. One of Chicana literature’s most important voices, her family’s history reflects the complex, cross-border communities she depicts in The Guardians and her other novels. Castillo was born in Chicago, but her parents spent time living in both Mexico and the US, and she grew up in a bilingual household. She holds a BS in art from Northeastern Illinois University, an MA in Latin American studies from the University of Chicago, and a doctorate in American studies from the University of Bremen, Germany.

Castillo is particularly known for Xicanisma, an intervention in Chicana feminism that seeks to decolonize mainstream feminist thought and highlight the role that Indigeneity plays within Chicana identity. Through Xicanisma, Castillo opened up new avenues for discussion within Chicana feminism and explored Chicana/Xicana activism, sexual liberation, spiritual practices, labor struggles and relations, artmaking, and educational issues. Her work centers the experiences of Latina women—Chicana/Xicana women in particular—and carves out a space within broader feminist discourses to interrogate how race and colonialism shape the identities and experiences of women in the Borderlands.

The use of the letter “x” in place of “ch” in “Xicanisma” is a reference to Spanish colonizers having been unable to pronounce the “sh” sound in local Indigenous languages.