Joy Castro is a Willa Cather Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and memoirist. She is best known for her memoir The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah's Witnesses, published in 2005. In addition to non-fiction, she writes poetry and short fiction, and has published two novels, Hell or High Water and Nearer Home, a book of short stories, How Winter Began, and a collection of essays, Island of Bones. She earned her B.A. at Trinity University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in literature at Texas A&M University.
Early life
Joy Castro was born in Miami in 1967 and raised in England and West Virginia after being adopted by a Cuban man and white woman. Her adopted mother was a devout Jehovah's Witness; Castro she was raised as Jehovah's Witness but no longer practices. Her parents adopted her after they were unable to have children of their own. They moved to London shortly after she was adopted. When she was five her parents were able to have a child of their own, and moved to West Virginia with Castro and her new brother Tony. Her mother ran a furniture store there. When Castro was a preteen her father was excommunicated from her mother's church for smoking and her parents divorced. Her father moved to the city and remarried while Castro and her brother stayed with their mother in their home in the country. Castro's mother was strictly religious and remarried a man who moved them into a trailer and beat and starved the family. Castro, who had thrown herself into her studies after her parents divorced, was forbidden from reading anything other than religious literature. She continued to work hard in school, despite being an outsider, and would sometimes sneak books home to study. At fourteen she ran away from her mother and abusive stepfather to live with her father in the city. At sixteen she graduated from high school and began attending Trinity University in Texas. She became pregnant but finished her degree while raising her child. Most of her classmates were from wealthy families, but Castro had to work as a part-time security guard and part-time waitress in addition to going to school and raising her child.
Works and achievements
Castro has written two literary thrillers set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Hell or High Water and Nearer Home; and two memoirs, The Truth Book and Island of Bones. Her work has appeared in magazines including Fourth Genre, North American Review, Afro-Hispanic Review, and the New York Times Magazine. She is the winner of the Nebraska Book Award and an International Latino Book Award, finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award, and editor of the anthology Family Trouble. She teaches creative writing, literature, and Latinx studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was named a Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies in 2018.
