CHILLONA

Ellie Lopez

ISBN: 9781965439081
Library of Congress Control Number: TBD
Cover Art: Adrienne Diaz
Book Design: Keana Aguila Labra
Paper | 6 x 9 | 110 Pages
Publication Date: October 28, 2025
Distributors: Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books Inc., Sampaguita Press, and select bookstores
Price: $20

I don’t want to talk at all

I watch words fly from my throat into the skies,

where the Gods take them back

A debut poetry collection by poet Ellie Lopez.

Synopsis:

In CHILLONA, Ellie Lopez crafts a powerful debut that pulses with heart, humor, and hard-won wisdom. With sharp language and a deep fluency in pop culture, Lopez captures the complexity of being an eldest daughter in a Mexican American family navigating life in the Bay Area. Her poems are both tender and unflinching, unspooling the emotional weight of diaspora with fearless vulnerability. Each piece invites the reader into intimate moments-joy, grief, rage, and resilience-rendered with lyrical precision. CHILLONA is a vibrant, unforgettable testament to survival, identity, and the beauty of letting oneself feel it all.

Advance Words:

In her heartfelt debut, CHILLONA, Bay Area poet Ellie Lopez enters the beautifully fragmented cosmos of Walter Mercado horoscopes, unanswered pocha mysteries, and, of course, the eternally admonishing tía who is quick to tell you what you are, and what you aren’t. Lopez tightropes herself across borders physical and unseen, across lineages, across realities that separate the dollars of aquí from the pesos of allá, weighing the conversion rate of an identity that is forever migratory, forever long distance, forever lusting in search of wholeness, which, it turns out, can be found inside the Oakland Coliseum during an A’s game, at a Taco Bell after binging episodes of Jersey Shore, or in Tijuana, Mexico City, and the Central Valley beneath an unforgiving sun and distant moon.

ALAN CHAZARO, These Spaceships Weren’t Built For Us, forthcoming Spring 2026

Ellie Lopez’s CHILLONA is a gorgeous rallying cry for Mexican-Americans who speak Spanish with an accent, eldest daughters, first gens, crybabies, emo kids, and those of us who have lost our girlhood somewhere. I loved how fearlessly Lopez wielded her pen with honesty and humor, speaking on familiar themes of generational trauma, forgiveness, family, coming-of-age, and home with fresh language and pop culture references, and an even stronger tongue. These are the kinds of poems I see myself in, that echo my own experiences and identities, and that will definitely make the whole family talk, cry, and swap chisme at the dinner table if you read them aloud.

SOFÍA AGUILAR, author of amor

Opening up with a heartfelt, yet hard-hitting poem about the struggles of being a Mexican-American woman growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, CHILLONA encapsulates what it feels like to grow up torn between two worlds that may never accept you. Ellie Lopez weaves a tale of growing up through challenges and tribulations outside (and a little inside) of her control with humor and heart. Lopez is a stand up comedian disguised as a poet who is about to give the reader the time of their lives in the next sixty minutes. She captures the feeling of wanting something so hard that you can taste the sweetness, only to be met with bitterness. CHILLONA is a poetry collection whose relatability will have people saying “Fuck a man from Hayward!” then going out to party with their friends after.

Ellie Celine, author of Depressed in Dealer’s Hall