How to Read Now: Essays

Castillo is a self-professed “bossy Virgo bitch ...irritatingly sure of myself and my convictions” and it shows.

I had to read this twice because I felt my initial knee-jerk recoiling against the book needed further examination. It's a pop culture smorgasbord as Castillo invokes everything from the X-men, HBO's Watchmen, J.K. Rowling and Jane Austen and should hit me where I live.

I'm here for her assessment that writers of color are often served up as some kind of “ethical protein shake”. That too often they are called upon to provide “the gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic: to learn about forgotten history, harrowing tragedy, community-destroying political upheaval, genocide, trauma; that we expect those writers to provide those intellectual commodities the way their ancestors once provided spices, minerals, precious stones, and unprecious bodies.” I'm nodding along wholeheartedly, I like what I'm hearing, but it's also a lot. Castillo lives in the strident, purple prose of the confidently righteous. And then I think, is my objection gender biased, have I internalized the dominant white supremacist status quo and resorted to tone policing?

I feel that way throughout the book. I've never read Joan Didion and don't care to defend her either. It feels too much of “not like other readers” but perhaps Castillo could have just as easily come for my fav DFW. I've never watched a Wong Kar-wai movie so don't share that spark of recognition. The second time around I was able to better piece it together and realize I like what she's saying but just didn't connect with the florid seething, unevenly mixed with far too hip asides. It probably just means I'm old, complacent, and doddering towards irrelevance.