Christmas, 1970 by Sandra M. Castillo (grades 10+)

"Christmas,1970" depicts the scene of a family's first Christmas in an unknown place away from home through the lens of a narrator reflecting back on her younger selves naive perspective. The descriptions allude to the unfamiliarity of an American Christmas as well as the assimilation that the family has undergone in the hopes of blending in to a new country.

Sandra Castillo was born in Havana, Cuba, earning both her BA and MA in creative writing from Florida State University. Her first book, My Father Sings to My Embarrassment (2002) was selected by Cornelius Eady for the White Pine Press Poetry Prize with several of her poems having been published in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. Many of her poems have been influenced by the possibility early on in her childhood of immigrating to the US and thus references the streets and lives she left behind in Cuba.