Joy Castro Reading

I’ll admit that I don’t go to nearly as many readings as a Creative Writing major should, and usually the ones I go to are because a Creative Writing professor required—or strongly encouraged—me to do so. Maybe it’s because my tastes aren’t always so literary. Or maybe it’s because it’s harder for me to make sense of things when they’re read aloud. The latter is especially the case with poetry. Unless read slowly and sort of obviously, the lines of the poem become wispy and too much for me to hold and make sense out of—even when I think I’d be able to get the poems just fine if I read them on paper.

However, on Monday, as part of the Undergraduate Literature and Creative Writing Conference, I went to the Joy Casto reading without being required to do so, and I think it may have been one of my favorite readings I’ve been to so far as Susquehanna.

I had never read any of Joy Castro’s work before but I was very impressed. Castro is mostly a nonfiction writer. She read to us some standalone essays as well as excerpts from her memoir The Truth Book. She also read to us from her first novel, Hell or High Water, which is coming out in July.

Castro’s writing was lyric and evocative. It was often dark, but there was also humor laced through some of her work. Certain scenes and essays stick in my mind, including a scene of young Joy questioning religion and Truth Book, Joy and her mother peeling apples, an essay about her deceased friend whose life path had diverged from her own and an essay about aging and marriage. 

There's definitely an added impact to nonfiction when hearing it spoken by the person who has gone through it all. Though I am not much of a creative nonfiction writer, hearing Joy Castro read reminded me of the power and creativity behind the genre.