Suspense, Mystery, Horror and Thriller Fiction - Suspense Magazine

Because I really had a lot to puzzle through, I used writing to help myself understand the experience, and that essay appears in
my forthcoming collection “Island of Bones.” Writing about it helped me figure out what it all meant to me.
Some of the gifts of working there were that I learned how to be diplomatic and that I learned not to back down. Another gift
was that I had a tenure-track job and financial security right out of graduate school, which is getting rarer and rarer, so as a
breadwinner for my family, I appreciated that stability. I was lucky to have a fantastic mentor there, Warren Rosenberg, who
guided and helped my career. He was really generous, and I loved him.
I also learned a real affection and respect for my students and colleagues. To connect and communicate across difference isn’t
easy. Many people surround themselves with only people who agree with and reinforce their own beliefs. I value having the
opportunity to do otherwise. It helped me become more self-sufficient. Enclaves feel good, but it’s nice to know I don’t need one.
I work now at a research university in a terrific small city. We have a great graduate program in creative writing, and I’m jointappointed
in ethnic studies. Many of my colleagues, friends, and students now are women, which is just a psychic relief. I’d been
lonely at the all-male college. I definitely prefer where I am now, but I’m glad to have learned so much from my first job.
S. MAG.: Was meeting your birth mother all you thought it would be?
JC: Hmm. You don’t pull any punches, do you? Well, the sad, true answer is no.
I had a vexed relationship with my adoptive mother, the one who raised me, whom I loved but who was neglectful and abusive.
My stepmother, whom I also loved, made no bones about the fact that she wasn’t maternal and that she behaved kindly to my
brother and me only out of a sense of obligation to our father.
So when, at twenty-six and a young mother myself, I finally met my birthmother, I had huge, profound, powerful hopes for
communion and connection. Even at the time, I suspected that my expectations were unrealistic, but I couldn’t help it. I had so
much unmet need that had built up over the years.
My birth mother is a lovely person, and I’m glad she’s in our lives. But a twenty-six-year void creates multiple, complicated
distances that no amount of effort and goodwill can fill, though we have both tried and continue to try.
I finally just had to come to grips with the fact that I was never really going to have the loving, close, connected kind of mother
I’d dreamed of. That experience wasn’t going to be part of my life.
But that’s just real. Lots of people don’t have that. So I decided I would just be that kind of mother instead: that I would parent
my son—and now, my foster daughter—in the ways I would have wished to be parented. That’s maybe about the best you can do.
S. MAG.: In “Hell or High Water” Nola confronts a painful past. Was writing for her cathartic for you?
JC: Oh, yes. I can’t say more without spoiling things for readers, but: oh, yes. I’m not sure about “catharsis,” per se, because I’d
already worked through my own issues before beginning to write this book. But I can definitely say that it was a profound
pleasure to write particular scenes. Comeuppance is a beautiful thing.
S. MAG.: Complete this sentence: If I had to stop writing tomorrow I would _________.
JC: If I had to stop writing tomorrow I would find other things to explore and enjoy. I love to write, but I don’t think I’d go
crazy without it or anything, as I’ve heard writers say they would. There are too many other fun things to discover in the world.
I’d probably talk the ears off my friends and family, though. They might come to miss the quiet. When I was very small—two,
three years old—before I learned to write, my dad used to call me ‘Mighty Mouth’ because apparently I just talked an unbroken
stream. Maybe I’d revert to that…
Suspense Magazine had a great time getting to know Joy Castro just a little better. If you’d like to read about Joy and her
work, feel free to look at her website at www.joycastro.com. �
SuspenseMagazine.com
15