The novel is as sprawling as the Bay itself, moving between Marcos-era Philippines to Milpitas in the 90s, but is centered around the story of the De Veras. It’s a Bay populated with rundown malls and Filipino restaurants that hold karaoke parties after closing time, of young second-gen immigrants who spend Saturday night playing cards in garages, and who take long drives every weekend in their hand-me-down Honda Civics to see friends spin the Pharcyde and Afrika Bambaataa records in Daly City. 2022.In her debut novel America is Not the Heart, Elaine Castillo writes about a Bay Area that is rarely represented in our culture: a home of working class immigrants. Castillo is openly bisexual and has said it was important for her to write about bisexual women in her novel because of how rarely they are depicted. The title of the novel is a reference to Carlos Bulosan's novel America Is in the Heart.
Parts of the book take place in Milpitas, California, where Castillo grew up. Maris Kreizman, wrote in Vulture that "the writing in America Is Not the Heart is tremendous, the descriptions evocative, and the characters will stay with you". Ligaya Mishan, writing for the New York Times Book Review, describes it as "hungrily ambitious in sweep and documentary in detail, and reads like a seismograph of the aftershocks from trading one life for another". Her first novel, America Is Not the Heart was published in 2018 and received widespread acclaim. She was a three-time recipient of the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for prose while at UC Berkeley, and she has also been nominated for the Pat Kavanagh Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a Gatewood Prize. In 2009, Castillo moved to London and later received a MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.
She was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended University of California, Berkeley.
Elaine Castillo (born 1984 ) is an American writer.
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