My Father Sings to My Embarrassment (White Pine Press Poetry Prize)

Selected by Cornelius Eady as winner of the Eighth Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize, this remarkable first book begins with Castillo s Cuban childhood, and follows her family as they "start over without a language" on one of the last Freedom Flights to Miami. The poems chronicle the visit of a Cuban uncle, who s surrounded by relatives that "twenty years and English have turned into strangers," and Castillo s bittersweet return to her homeland: "Even a map cannot show you the way back to a place that no longer exists."