She was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended University of California, Berkeley.

Ligaya Mishan, writing for the New York Times Book Review, describes the novel as "hungrily ambitious in sweep and documentary in detail, and reads like a seismograph of the aftershocks from trading one life for another".

[6] 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".

[7] Parts of the book take place in Milpitas, California, where Castillo grew up.

The title of the novel is a reference to Carlos Bulosan's novel America Is in the Heart.