{"id":3936,"date":"2013-11-26T16:33:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T21:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=3936"},"modified":"2013-11-27T15:41:06","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T20:41:06","slug":"cnf-conversations-an-interview-with-joy-castro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=3936","title":{"rendered":"CNF Conversations: An Interview with Joy Castro"},"content":{"rendered":"<style><!--\n\/* Font Definitions *\/ @font-face \t{font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\"; \tmso-font-charset:78; \tmso-generic-font-family:auto; \tmso-font-pitch:variable; \tmso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face \t{font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\"; \tmso-font-charset:78; \tmso-generic-font-family:auto; \tmso-font-pitch:variable; \tmso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face \t{font-family:Cambria; \tpanose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; \tmso-font-charset:0; \tmso-generic-font-family:auto; \tmso-font-pitch:variable; \tmso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;}  \/* Style Definitions *\/ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal \t{mso-style-unhide:no; \tmso-style-qformat:yes; \tmso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmargin:0in; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tmso-pagination:widow-orphan; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:Cambria; \tmso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; \tmso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; \tmso-fareast-font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\"; \tmso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; \tmso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; \tmso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; \tmso-bidi-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault \t{mso-style-type:export-only; \tmso-default-props:yes; \tfont-family:Cambria; \tmso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; \tmso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; \tmso-fareast-font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\"; \tmso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; \tmso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; \tmso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; \tmso-bidi-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 \t{size:8.5in 11.0in; \tmargin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; \tmso-header-margin:.5in; \tmso-footer-margin:.5in; \tmso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 \t{page:WordSection1;}\n--><\/style>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Castro-small-headshot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-3940\" alt=\"Castro small headshot\" src=\"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Castro-small-headshot.jpg\" width=\"265\" height=\"442\" srcset=\"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Castro-small-headshot.jpg 331w, https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Castro-small-headshot-179x300.jpg 179w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 265px) 100vw, 265px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.joycastro.com\/FamilyTrouble.htm\">Joy Castro, ed. <em>Family Trouble<\/em>. University of Nebraska Press, 2013. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Joy Castro<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.joycastro.com\">http:\/\/www.joycastro.com<\/a> is the author of the memoir <em>The Truth Book<\/em> (Arcade, 2005) and the New Orleans literary thrillers <em>Hell or High Water<\/em> (St. Martin\u2019s, 2012) and <em>Nearer Home<\/em> (St. Martin\u2019s, 2013). Her essay collection <em>Island of Bones<\/em> (U of Nebraska, 2012) is a PEN Finalist and the winner of an International Latino Book Award. Her work has appeared in <em>Fourth Genre<\/em>, <em>Seneca Review<\/em>, <em>Brevity<\/em>, <em>North American Review<\/em>, and <em>The New York Times Magazine<\/em>. An associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she teaches literature, creative writing, and Latino studies.<\/p>\n<p><em>Essays by twenty-five memoirists explore the fraught territory of family history, analyzing the ethical dilemmas of writing about family and offering practical strategies for navigating this tricky but necessary material. A sustained and eminently readable lesson in the craft of memoir, <\/em><strong>Family Trouble<\/strong><em> serves as a practical guide for writers who want to narrate their own versions of the truth while still acknowledging family boundaries.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The 25 distinguished, award-winning memoirists who contributed to Family Trouble come from a wide array of cultural backgrounds and family configurations. They include college and university educators, many of whom have published craft texts.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The contributors, with links to their author websites, are listed here:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.joycastro.com\/FamilyTrouble.htm\">http:\/\/www.joycastro.com\/FamilyTrouble.htm<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Family-Trouble-cover.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-3941\" alt=\"Family Trouble cover\" src=\"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Family-Trouble-cover.png\" width=\"254\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Family-Trouble-cover.png 530w, https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Family-Trouble-cover-198x300.png 198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 254px) 100vw, 254px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Julija \u0160ukys: Joy, I\u2019m so happy to have the opportunity to discuss your recent edited anthology, <em>Family Trouble.<\/em> I myself am working on a project that tells the story of my family\u2019s history, and I\u2019m grateful for the chance to have a conversation with you about it here and with the authors whose works you gathered via the pages of your book. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tell me a bit about yourself. What is your writing background, and how did you come to want to put together this collection about the challenges of writing about family? How did you find the contributors to this book, who are many and varied?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Joy Castro:<\/strong> First of all, thank you so much for your interest in this book. I\u2019m grateful. I hope <i>Family Trouble<\/i> will help many writers, aspiring writers, and teachers of writing as they think through these tricky issues.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve published two books of memoir, <i>The Truth Book <\/i>(2005) and <i>Island of Bones <\/i>(2012), both from University of Nebraska Press, which also brought out <i>Family Trouble<\/i>. I\u2019m also a writer of literary thrillers: <i>Hell or High Water<\/i> (2012) and <i>Nearer Home<\/i>, both set in New Orleans and both from St. Martin\u2019s Press, and they\u2019ve been optioned for film or television. I publish essays, short fiction, and poetry. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I teach fiction and creative nonfiction in the graduate program.<\/p>\n<p>The idea for this particular collection began to grow when I was touring with <i>The Truth Book<\/i>. After I read, audiences always wanted to know how my family felt about the revelations it contained. That surprised me. I knew how carefully I\u2019d thought through those issues of respect, privacy, and artistic license, but I hadn\u2019t realized that anyone else would be interested.<\/p>\n<p>At the AWP conference in 2008, I coordinated a panel on the topic\u2014mostly due to my own curiosity, and so that I could hear what the other four panelists thought about it.\u00a0 I thought 20 or 30 people might show up.\u00a0 But over 400 came.\u00a0 I knew then that I\u2019d stumbled onto something that was an issue of real urgency for many people, so I decided to try gathering a collection of diverse views on the topic.<\/p>\n<p>A few of the contributors were memoirists I knew personally whose work I admired.\u00a0 Others were writers whose work alone I knew and admired, and I e-mailed them with an invitation to contribute. A very few, like Paul Lisicky and Susan Olding, were writers whose work I didn\u2019t previously know but who were recommended to me by contributors whose work I\u2019d already accepted, and their essays were really great and fit the collection\u2019s topic well. In one case, I went after a published essay I\u2019d read online, the piece by Alison Bechdel, because it spoke so beautifully (and succinctly) to the topic.<\/p>\n<p>In gathering the pieces, I wanted to include memoirists whose opinions, aesthetics, and strategies diverged significantly, so the collection could examine the issue from a variety of perspectives.\u00a0 No easy consensus emerges, and I think that\u2019s a healthy, lively, challenging thing for readers to experience.<\/p>\n<p>I also wanted other kinds of diversity:\u00a0 cultural, sexual, racial, class, family itself.\u00a0 There are several pieces by memoirists who occupy positions in the adoption triad, for example. These social, experiential factors inflect how we approach the issue of writing about family, so I wanted to try to include a broad range of standpoints.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Writing about family, just about everyone agrees, is problematic because it involves telling the stories of others. There is almost a necessary appropriation that happens in the writing of family stories, since families are, by definition, networks of relationships and of love, resentment, competing memories, and allegiances. \u201cThe details might be a part of my story,\u201d writes Ariel Gore, \u201cbut it is not my story alone\u201d (65). Similarly, Heather Sellers suggests in the last essay in the collection: \u201cTo write about family is to plagiarize life. I believe it can be done with grace. I believe, in my case, it has been the right thing to do. But it\u2019s still stealing\u201d (211). What do you think of Sellers\u2019 use of plagiarism and theft as ways of talking about the theme at hand? Is writing about family always transgressive?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I was happy to get to write the introduction to the collection, which gave me the opportunity to lay out my own point of view on these matters at length. Here, I\u2019ll just say that I respect, have learned from, and enjoy all the different essayists\u2019 perspectives, but my own is that writing memoir is a search for understanding. For me, if I\u2019m immersed in answering urgent questions that move and hurt me, and I include nothing irrelevant to those questions, nothing gratuitous, then the work is not transgressive or exploitative.<\/p>\n<p>I understand, though, that the people about whom I\u2019ve written may take a different view.<\/p>\n<p>And to be frank, I understand that. When I\u2019ve seen myself written about (as in a newspaper, for example), I often cringe a little, feeling as though a partial, and thus distorting, portrait has been drawn. This has come to seem perhaps inevitable, since we humans intersect with each other in such incomplete ways. Yet I still often find those public depictions uncomfortable and inaccurate. So I understand that people who\u2019ve found themselves depicted in memoir might feel quite the same way\u2014and even more strongly, since memoir often reveals painful material.<\/p>\n<p>I wholly support writers\u2019 right to explore such material, but I also empathize with people who don\u2019t like seeing themselves in print.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>In \u201cMama\u2019s Voices,\u201d Susan Olding describes feeling judged by her peers for writing about the difficulties she encountered while raising an adopted daughter who had been severely neglected while living in an orphanage as an infant. Writing about family is one thing, her peers say, but to write nonfiction is where ethical problems creep in, namely, the question of exploitation. Here\u2019s a snippet from Olding\u2019s essay, where she is reacting to an onslaught of negative feedback from her peers and mentor in writing workshop: <\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>I ask the question that\u2019s been bothering me. Was it something I said? Was there anything in that first essay\u2014the one I brought to the class\u2014was there anything in the writing, that led her to believe that I might treat this material in an exploitative way? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, she says. It wasn\u2019t the writing. The writing was fine. But the situation was inherently exploitative. My daughter, I\u2019d said, had been traumatized by her history of abandonment and orphanage neglect. To write a book about my daughter\u2019s trauma would be to reinscribe it. It was a huge betrayal. \u2018To a nonwriter, a book is the truth.\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Suppose I wrote a book of poems.\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Oh.\u2019 She pauses. \u2018That would be okay. That would be different.\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But why? (108)<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>What is your response to the ways in which the fourth genre, our genre of (creative) nonfiction, is held up to a standard that is different and ethically more rigorous than fiction, poetry or drama?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It simply is. We stake a particular sociopolitical claim when we publish our work as nonfiction. We say, <i>This really happened<\/i>. We enter a contract with readers, many of whom read more intensely, invest differently, when they believe the work is factual. We can resist that contract, mock it as na\u00efve, flout it, or honor it, as we like, but it\u2019s there, and most writers operate with that awareness. Other genres offer the cloak\u2014and it may be only an illusion, but it\u2019s a functioning illusion\u2014of unreality.<\/p>\n<p>On that issue, I love David Lazar\u2019s edited collection <i>Truth in Nonfiction <\/i>(University of Iowa Press, 2008), which includes essays by Kathryn Harrison, Mark Doty, Judith Ortiz Cofer, David Shields, John D\u2019Agata, and more.<\/p>\n<p><i>Family Trouble <\/i>isn\u2019t particularly focused on that issue, but it does crop up from time to time (as in the Olding essay), since it\u2019s salient for all nonfiction writers.\u00a0 In Karen McElmurray\u2019s essay, for example, she recalls her father asking why she can\u2019t just write it all but then publish it as a novel, and Bich Minh Nguyen\u2019s essay addresses directly the issue of genre.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Last winter at the AWP Conference in Boston, I attended a very interesting panel on writing about family and friends. One piece of advice given there was never to give veto power to those you write about. Share your work only in its last stages, once you\u2019re happy with it, and never offer control over to others. In <em>Family Trouble<\/em>, a variety of scenarios are offered: some writers describe sharing their work-in-progress and welcome input from those they write about; others publish without input and live with the consequences. Where do you come down on the issue of familial input and veto power?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one of the things I love about the essays in <i>Family Trouble<\/i>: they demonstrate so clearly that what works for one writer won\u2019t work for another. Where I come down on the issue of veto power is that the important thing is to think through your own situation and figure out what really works, the strategy that will let you sleep at night. Some of us are very autonomous, and what the AWP panel suggested will work fine. Some of us have identities that are more relational and wouldn\u2019t dream of excluding our family members from the process, like Allison Hedge Coke and Paul Austin, whose essays are included in the book.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, it\u2019s a kind of cost-benefit analysis. What might a manuscript lose when you share it with family members and invite their feedback, and what might it gain? What might you lose if you publish without letting family members give input\u2014relationships you value? The important thing is to be sure you\u2019re aware of the potential costs and proceed accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>In my own particular case, I shared the manuscript of <i>The Truth Book<\/i> with only my younger brother, who had gone through childhood abuse with me, and I did give him veto power. For me, his feelings were more important than my book. As it turned out, he vetoed nothing, and he actually reminded me of a detail that, when added, enhanced the story. I didn\u2019t share the manuscript with other members of my family, because I knew them well enough to anticipate that they would be only angry, would want only to suppress publication.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a calculation each writer needs to make for herself or himself:\u00a0 for her or his own family, for her or his own art.<\/p>\n<p><strong>By and large, the authors in this collection agree on basic principles. Namely: nonfiction writers who tell family stories often write out of an urgent need. These are stories of survival, of struggle, and of identity formation. Most agree that they cannot predict the reactions of others. Most also agree that any pain caused is unintentional, but also a risk worth taking. Most agree that writing about family is not inherently exploitative, though all are aware of that danger as they write.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>That said, there were a couple of passages in this book that surprised and troubled me. In \u201cI Might Be Famous,\u201d Ralph James Savarese writes about his adoption of a boy with autism and his subsequent decision to write a book both about and in collaboration with his son. \u201cThe whole point of the book and of the life the three of us had constructed was to show what was possible with respect to family making and autism, especially at the so-called low-functioning end of the spectrum\u201d (132). Savarese worries explicitly about exposing his son and weighs the benefits of telling his child\u2019s story against the harm it might cause \u2013 this is a calculation that, it seems to me, every writer must make. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>But then we read the following:\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>\u201cThis [meaning himself, Ralph James Savarese] wasn\u2019t the case of a writer who, like David Sedaris, exploits his family for personal gain.\u201d (133) <\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Huh. Really? The starkness of this judgment of a fellow writer who, after all, is doing something not all that different, was unexpected and seemed (to me) un-nuanced. Surely Sedaris is doing something more complex than simply exploiting his family. Surely he too writes from a place of necessity, even if his writing is funny, and he must do so for reasons other than personal gain. We know, for example, that the young Sedaris long lived a Spartan life and supported his writing life by cleaning houses. His work therefore can\u2019t possibly just be about money or fame or status, no?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you make of the judgment that Savarese makes of Sedaris, and the way he seems to argue that writing about family is OK under one set of circumstances (his) and not OK under others? It seems to me that he\u2019s doing something different here than Sellers who says \u201cwe are all thieves.\u201d Savarese, by contrast, seems to say, \u201cYou are the thief. I am not.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What an interesting point, and thanks for pointing out those areas of agreement that do emerge among many of the writers.<\/p>\n<p>Without knowing exactly what was in Ralph\u2019s mind when he made that comment, and without knowing David Sedaris\u2019s history as well as you do, I\u2019d hazard that he\u2019s looking at Sedaris\u2019s work as operating primarily in the mode of entertainment, of humor, rather than the kind of urgent search you mention above. Moreover, I\u2019d imagine that he\u2019s thinking about Sedaris in the aspect in which he came to the general public\u2019s attention: as that rare writer who publishes regularly in <i>The New Yorker <\/i>and can fill an auditorium at $30 a ticket.\u00a0 That is, as a writer who explores \u00a0family material for fun and profit, rather than as a writer who pursues family material with social and\/or political urgency.<\/p>\n<p>As you point out, that\u2019s not a complete picture, and I\u2019ve found some Sedaris pieces\u2014recently, in fact\u2014quite wrenching and serious. I don\u2019t know whether to call them exploitative or not, so I probably wouldn\u2019t; I don\u2019t know enough about his work.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u2019d guess I\u2019d understand Ralph\u2019s line as employing Sedaris\u2014\u201cSedaris,\u201d if you will\u2014as a kind of quick symbol for a subgenre of memoir that is primarily humorous and (perhaps not incidentally) quite profitable.<\/p>\n<p>This circles back to that being-depicted-in-print issue I discussed above. You bristled at seeing Sedaris summed up so quickly and inaccurately\u2014or incompletely, at least\u2014for someone else\u2019s agenda. David Sedaris might be uncomfortable to see himself so reduced to one or two aspects of his work. A partial portrait, deployed for someone else\u2019s purpose.<\/p>\n<p>My guess is that Ralph used \u201cSedaris\u201d to convey, in a quick stroke, a kind of memoir that he himself isn\u2019t interested in. However, that\u2019s sheer speculation. I haven\u2019t consulted Ralph with your question, and I could be entirely wrong.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Finally, Savarese appears to write off the genre of memoir and so-called confessional writing completely, suggesting that \u201cthe status of testimony to which so many memoirs of personal injury aspire might best be served by silence or some private expression of grief\u201d (136). He seems to say: my motivations are pure, my story important, and therefore my project of writing about family members, even the most vulnerable ones, is acceptable and laudable. You (whoever you are\u2026), however, should remain silent. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>This seems problematic to me. Do we really want to re-silence communities (of women, of First Nations people, of transgendered individuals, of survivors of all kinds) who are just now finding their voices, because some of what they write may rub us the wrong way, or may not be high art, or may be different from the sorts of books we (or Savarese) might write?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Am I misreading being too harsh in my judgments in turn? Are we writers too easy on each other, wanting perhaps to see the best in our colleagues because that reflects better on us? Am I perhaps just being too touchy, given that I\u2019m afraid of being the objects of such judgments myself? What do you make of this? Any wisdom you could offer on this series of (unanswerable) questions would be welcome! <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I read this line in the Savarese essay differently. I see it as exploratory and philosophical, as directed toward Ralph himself and his own projects, as well as memoir generally, and as being therefore similar to Sandra Scofield\u2019s essay\u2019s exploration of <i>not <\/i>writing the potential memoir that\u2019s nudging at her, or Dinty W. Moore\u2019s final decision not to write about his daughter. Most memoirists have moments when they wonder if what they\u2019re doing is good, is right, is justified, and I see Ralph\u2019s line as musing on that.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps I\u2019m especially inclined to read it that way because I have a larger context: I\u2019ve read Ralph\u2019s own memoir, had fascinating conversations with him, and know the extent of his support of other memoirists. I\u2019m also familiar with his passionate editorial efforts to give voice to the diverse perspectives of others, such as the terrific special issue of <i>Seneca Review<\/i> on the lyric body and <i>Papa PhD: Essays on Fatherhood by Men in the Academy<\/i> (Rutgers UP, 2010). In my experience, he\u2019s unlikely to call for anyone\u2019s silence and instead works actively to promote the voices of others.<\/p>\n<p>Aware of that larger context, I read his line as a kind of sympathetic, thoughtful probing of the issue (<i>As writers, we\u2019ve done<\/i> x<i>, but maybe<\/i> y<i> would really have been better<\/i>). Again, I could be wrong. As an editor, I should have tried harder to imagine how that line would have fallen on the ears of someone who didn\u2019t have that context, and I should have asked Ralph to clarify his point. Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>In a larger sense, though, as an editor, I tried to include writers\u2019 moments of doubt, of ambivalence, of self-contradiction. Paul Austin\u2019s essay, for example, expresses a kind of wondering about what\u2019s best, and so do some of the other memoirists included in <i>Family Trouble<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I think the inclusion of these moments of self-interrogation may help to provide a fuller depiction of the thinking that goes into this issue.\u00a0 They dramatize on the page the thoughtful way that memoirists have considered their work.\u00a0 For most of us who write about our families, there\u2019s nothing cavalier about it.\u00a0 Rather, most memoirists have thought long and hard about these issues.\u00a0 I think Heather Sellers\u2019s and Jill Christman\u2019s essays, for example, are sheer genius, and I love the piece by Aaron Raz Link.\u00a0 Everyone\u2019s essay offered something different, something interesting.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m looking forward to the <i>Family Trouble<\/i> panel this year at AWP in Seattle.\u00a0 Contributors Faith Adiele, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Ralph Savarese, and Sue William Silverman will be there with me, reading brief excerpts from their essays and answering questions, and everyone\u2019s welcome to come.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks so much for your thoughtful engagement with the book, and every best wish with writing your own family story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thank you!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"CNF%20Conversations%3A%20An%20Interview%20with%20Joy%20Castro\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joy Castro, ed. Family Trouble. University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Joy Castro\u00a0http:\/\/www.joycastro.com is the author of the memoir The Truth Book (Arcade, 2005) and the New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water (St. Martin\u2019s, 2012) and Nearer Home (St. Martin\u2019s, 2013). Her essay collection Island of Bones (U of Nebraska, 2012) is a PEN &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=3936\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;CNF Conversations: An Interview with Joy Castro&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"CNF%20Conversations%3A%20An%20Interview%20with%20Joy%20Castro\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,14,101,97,93,62,172,127,170,148,171,169,4,42,137,138,33,166,157,54,43,94,1,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adoption","category-autobiography","category-children","category-china","category-cnf-conversations","category-creative-nonfiction","category-david-shields","category-essays","category-family","category-interviews","category-john-dagata","category-joy-castro","category-lifewriting","category-memoir","category-memory","category-mental-illness","category-mothering","category-nebraska","category-ordinariness","category-personal-essays","category-publishing","category-susan-olding","category-uncategorized","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3936"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3960,"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3936\/revisions\/3960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}