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American Lives
Island of Bones: Essays
What is “identity” when you’re a girl adopted as an infant by a Cuban American family of Jehovah’s Witnesses? The answer isn’t easy. You won’t find it in books. And you certainly won’t find it in the neighborhood. This is just the beginning of Joy Castro’s unmoored life of searching and striving that she’s turned to account with literary alchemy in Island of Bones . In personal essays that plumb the depths of not-belonging, Castro takes the all-too-raw materials of her adolescence and young adulthood and views them through the prism of time. The result is an exquisitely rendered, richly detailed perspective on a uniquely troubled young life that reflects on the larger questions each of us faces in a world where diversity and singularity are forever at odds. In the experiences of her past—hunger and abuse, flight as a fourteen-year-old runaway, single motherhood, the revelations of her “true” ethnic identity, the suicide of her father—Castro finds the “jagged, smashed place of edges and fragments” that she pieces together to create an island all her own. Hers is a complicated but very real depiction of what it is to “jump class,” to not belong but to find one’s voice in the interstices of identity.
132 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 23, 2012
I have long been a fan of Joy Castro's writing, and this collection of brief essays only increased my admiration. Castro has a way of making every word and sentence count toward the whole. Her prose is lyric yet sharp, clear yet layered with exquisite metaphor. Nothing is extraneous or unnecessary. Here is a writer who manages to be poetic, political, and personal at the same time and often in the same piece. You can be astonished by her courage and openness one moment and simply impressed by her intellect the next. By the time you have read the full book, you are likely to find yourself pondering your own path and your own perceptions of life, love, justice, and success. I have believed for some time that Joy Castro is destined to be an important voice in American literature, and this book reinforces my prediction.
October 9, 2023
my favorite book i’ve had to read for a class i think!! so specific and lovely and to the point
August 25, 2017
Stunning. Specific yet universal. So many stories that touched me, made me say "I know this feeling" even though the experiences were not mine. The cover is perfect-- I held this little book up and realized there was an ocean inside.
Will re-read.
Will re-read.
March 6, 2020
This book. Read it. It’ll open your eyes, and you will want the writing of more women like Castro in your life.
January 17, 2022
⭐️5
Wow oh wow. This book definitely had moments that didn’t fully connect with me, which makes sense considering not all of these stories were written for me. However, the moments and lines that did connect hit hard and were extremely powerful. I am so happy that this book was recommended to me by a small Indy bookstore and that this book was written by an amazing person who shares her talents with the university that I am attending.
Wow oh wow. This book definitely had moments that didn’t fully connect with me, which makes sense considering not all of these stories were written for me. However, the moments and lines that did connect hit hard and were extremely powerful. I am so happy that this book was recommended to me by a small Indy bookstore and that this book was written by an amazing person who shares her talents with the university that I am attending.
May 31, 2018
Joy Castro possesses a beautiful consciousness--a brave and light awareness of her life that is at once inspiring and humbling. These essays teem with strength, elegance, and a thoughtfulness of one who has taken a good hard look at herself and her world and come away with a desire to design her life on her own terms. By the end I was near tears as she described the sisterhood she cultivates in middle age as an empty nester exploring a new sense of self. A remarkable book that will stay on my mind for a long time.
October 3, 2023
This is a difficult book to rate and to appreciate for the skill of Castro's writing. Why? The facts that she suffered such neglect, abuse, and poverty for so long in her life AND had to re-evaluate her identity overwhelmed me as a reader. Each chapter brought another punch to the gut, another attempt for me to reconcile the calm, cool, measured workshop leader and skillful teacher with whom I spent four days at Bear River just last month with the child, the woman, the mother who had to persist in order to survive, let alone realize her dreams. After reading Island of Bones, I would think that just getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of the other would be living the dream.
The beauty of this book is that, while the essays fearlessly shed light on the many painful traumas Castro endured, they are also master classes in how to write an essay. Each is an independent glimpse of a life derailed by adults who failed miserably in protecting and caring for Castro and her brother. The essays also offer a look at the monumental effort she expended to reclaim her life and live it on her terms. The writing is beautiful, haunting, challenging at times, and ultimately uplifting.
The beauty of this book is that, while the essays fearlessly shed light on the many painful traumas Castro endured, they are also master classes in how to write an essay. Each is an independent glimpse of a life derailed by adults who failed miserably in protecting and caring for Castro and her brother. The essays also offer a look at the monumental effort she expended to reclaim her life and live it on her terms. The writing is beautiful, haunting, challenging at times, and ultimately uplifting.
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March 9, 2023 I often recommend this book to writers who are working on memoir and memory and truth. In this delicate and honest collection of essays, Castro tells the story of her childhood, young adulthood, and early motherhood with startling grace and candor. Given the circumstances of those years, it is amazing that Castro can write with such a light touch, but she does. I come away with a deeply nuanced sense of the humanity of all the players in her life. The book is unequivocal about speaking openly and candidly about people who have caused other people (including the author) a great deal of pain. This is some of the best writing I know about such difficult-to-handle topics as suicide, abuse, hunger, and trauma. And yet, why do I remember this book with a fond and warm heart? Pain and peace live together here because Castro is a miracle worker with language and with life.
March 27, 2019
A series of short essays as memoir... loved this format. "Island of Bones" is the Spanish name for Key West, where Castro's father grew up. She was raised Latinx by her adoptive parents, until later they all learned her biological parents were white. What is race, anyway? She writes of getting by as a single mother in poverty while also as a grad student in English (whaaat???? wow) and of serving as a woman of color and tenured professor at the all-male Wabash College in central Indiana. Not easy. She has a longer memoir, "The Truth Book," but this was so compact, so beautifully written, and although all these essays were originally published elsewhere, they come together so neatly, like a story puzzle. This was recommended by a friend, and I'm so glad I picked it up.
April 11, 2025
Lovely, but some of the content was disturbing and I wish my prof had given a better content warning. That’s never leaving my brain now! Not that I shy away from those things, I just want to be mindful of content I’m consuming. I need to KNOW what I’m in for. Hated «Liking it Rough» bc of this reason which I tried tried tried to fight this desire—wasn’t happening. Big Thanks to Susan, something about white women named Susan ruining my life !
I adore Joy Castro’s writing, and as a result there’s not much that I had wrong with this as a collection of stories
I adore Joy Castro’s writing, and as a result there’s not much that I had wrong with this as a collection of stories
December 22, 2019
In a series of short chapters, the author narrates her life story in clear, powerful, distilled language. Adopted by Jehovah's witnesses, she grows up confounded by their belief system and contradictions until she is old enough to rebel and separate.
January 30, 2024
I fell quickly into this book and it affected me deeply. Castro has a real gift for making ugliness beautiful.
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September 23, 2012Island of Bones (University of Nebraska Press) is a collection of essays that covers Castro’s personal life, including a horribly abusive childhood, and her career working as the rare Latina in academia in the Midwest.
The title essay examines the stereotypes people have about Latinos, such as their faith and looks. Another great essay, “Fitting,” discusses the subtle barbs of female friendships and the importance of a good spouse.
Like her novel, Castro excels when she discusses class issues. Coming from a poor background, she is amazed at the food spreads in the faculty meetings at the college at she works.
In one of the best essays, “On Becoming Educated,” she points out how academia doesn’t reach out to everyday Latinas.
“I’m a first-generation college student, here by fluke on fellowship, and the theorists’ English seems foreign to me, filled with jargon and abstractions at which I can only guess. They say nothing about wife-beating or rape or unequal wages or child molesting, which is the charge that finally got my stepfather sent to prison. They say nothing about being a single mother on ten thousand dollars a year, which is my own situation. The feminist writers respond to male theorists – Lacan, Derrida – whose work I haven’t read. I can’t parse their sentences or recognize their allusions, and I don’t know what they mean or how they’re helpful to the strippers and dropouts and waitresses I know, the women I care abut the most, to my aunt Lettie who worked the register at Winn-Dixie and my aunt Linda who cleaned houses.”
Fortunately, in Castro, women like Lettie and Linda have someone that’s writing about them.
Note: This review appeared on my blog, The Hispanic Reader (http://hispanicreader.com). I received a review copy from the publisher.
The title essay examines the stereotypes people have about Latinos, such as their faith and looks. Another great essay, “Fitting,” discusses the subtle barbs of female friendships and the importance of a good spouse.
Like her novel, Castro excels when she discusses class issues. Coming from a poor background, she is amazed at the food spreads in the faculty meetings at the college at she works.
In one of the best essays, “On Becoming Educated,” she points out how academia doesn’t reach out to everyday Latinas.
“I’m a first-generation college student, here by fluke on fellowship, and the theorists’ English seems foreign to me, filled with jargon and abstractions at which I can only guess. They say nothing about wife-beating or rape or unequal wages or child molesting, which is the charge that finally got my stepfather sent to prison. They say nothing about being a single mother on ten thousand dollars a year, which is my own situation. The feminist writers respond to male theorists – Lacan, Derrida – whose work I haven’t read. I can’t parse their sentences or recognize their allusions, and I don’t know what they mean or how they’re helpful to the strippers and dropouts and waitresses I know, the women I care abut the most, to my aunt Lettie who worked the register at Winn-Dixie and my aunt Linda who cleaned houses.”
Fortunately, in Castro, women like Lettie and Linda have someone that’s writing about them.
Note: This review appeared on my blog, The Hispanic Reader (http://hispanicreader.com). I received a review copy from the publisher.
January 7, 2015
As a baby, memoirist Joy Castro was adopted by a family of Cuban American Jehovah’s Witnesses—an early life event that, needless to say, let to a multitude of questions about identity, belonging and self. It is such questions that Castro explores throughout her memoir-in-essays “Island of Bones”; part of the American Lives series put together by University of Nebraska Press.
Each of these raw, often angry, and always inspiring essays tell a different story about Castro’s childhood and emerging adulthood—the uncommon experience of being a child of Jehovah’s Witnesses; running away from home at fourteen; young pregnancy and its subsequent single motherhood; the suicide of her father; her relationships with family, food and men; her relationships with language and literature; the transforming power of a college education: what truths it offers as well as those it leaves out.
“Island of Bones” digs deep into myriad issues of identity: racial and ethnic, religious and spiritual, economic, intellectual, womanhood and motherhood. But beyond the difficult and important conversation it offers readers, the book itself is just beautifully constructed. The language Castro uses, with the occasional inclusion of Spanish, is absolutely gorgeous. Her words are best lingered over, because the way she arranges them into story is extraordinary.
Each of these raw, often angry, and always inspiring essays tell a different story about Castro’s childhood and emerging adulthood—the uncommon experience of being a child of Jehovah’s Witnesses; running away from home at fourteen; young pregnancy and its subsequent single motherhood; the suicide of her father; her relationships with family, food and men; her relationships with language and literature; the transforming power of a college education: what truths it offers as well as those it leaves out.
“Island of Bones” digs deep into myriad issues of identity: racial and ethnic, religious and spiritual, economic, intellectual, womanhood and motherhood. But beyond the difficult and important conversation it offers readers, the book itself is just beautifully constructed. The language Castro uses, with the occasional inclusion of Spanish, is absolutely gorgeous. Her words are best lingered over, because the way she arranges them into story is extraordinary.
August 24, 2015
For anyone who has been through adoption or given a surname by a step parent, identity is something that is grappled with in teenaged years. Add in divorce, abuse, hunger and loneliness and you have a life which is "jagged, smashed place of edges and fragments..."
The connected essays in this memoir gave me much to think about, especially when exploring what identity means. Many times we're perceived to be someone based on our surname when that is just a bit of the whole story. For the author, there is a lot of exploring to do. She is adopted by a Cuban America family of Jehovah's Witnesses with parents who later divorced, and throw her into their chaotic mess of a life.
All of these issues and subsequent questions of identity are brought forth in these essays, many which are gut wrenching and others that show the tenacity of the author to become her best self.
The language in the memoir is clear, direct, and touching.
The connected essays in this memoir gave me much to think about, especially when exploring what identity means. Many times we're perceived to be someone based on our surname when that is just a bit of the whole story. For the author, there is a lot of exploring to do. She is adopted by a Cuban America family of Jehovah's Witnesses with parents who later divorced, and throw her into their chaotic mess of a life.
All of these issues and subsequent questions of identity are brought forth in these essays, many which are gut wrenching and others that show the tenacity of the author to become her best self.
The language in the memoir is clear, direct, and touching.
July 24, 2013
I originally found Joy Castro in another anthology after reading her essay "Farm Use" which cuts straight to the bone. (It's reprinted here in this collection.) From there I sought out her memoir "The Truth Book" which fulfilled the promise of that essay. Then when I saw this book of essays at my university library, I knew I had to read it. I was afraid the book might be too academic, but the essays aren't that at all. Joy Castro is a down-to-earth accessible academic, a rare creature these days. These are short (and not so sweet) memoir essays about being a woman whose identity crosses many boundaries. This book covers so many topics, child abuse, motherhood, poverty, becoming educated, adoption, birth parents, suicide. After reading this book, I searched out her blog, and discovered she'd written two novels. Guess what I'll be reading next?
March 10, 2015
W O W. I've not read much non-fiction before this, but what few expectations I did have were SO exceeded. Castro is a totally captivating writer, and you genuinely like her. As such, the things that happen to her are even more horrific (though they're so horrific on their own anyways). She lays out these essays without flinching from the truth of her past, baldly laying out her troubles unapologetically and (seemingly) without alteration of the horrible truth.
The only fault I find is in the last essay. After all she had established, it felt a bit like a cop out -- a tying together of ribbons that perhaps were better left untied. The essay "In Theory" conveys much of the same theme, but it doesn't spell out the message for you, which is nice. Not at all worth docking a star though. Highly recommend, questionably suitable for young adults though.
The only fault I find is in the last essay. After all she had established, it felt a bit like a cop out -- a tying together of ribbons that perhaps were better left untied. The essay "In Theory" conveys much of the same theme, but it doesn't spell out the message for you, which is nice. Not at all worth docking a star though. Highly recommend, questionably suitable for young adults though.
January 31, 2013
I would love to give this book to all the women in my life, young and old. Joy Castro raises questions about feminist theory and class and cultural beliefs all amid an on-going dialogue about feminism for those who live in the "real" world, "sistering" relationships, and women's ongoing self-explorations as we age, as family commitments change, and the urgency of continuing to work in the world to right injustices. She brings a unique history of adoption, childhood abuse and neglect, poverty, and success in academia to the conversation. The book is provocative and inspiring. She is an author on my "I'd love to have lunch with" list. The book is a series of essays, memoir-based, short and gripping! Highly recommended!
October 2, 2015
Castro's writing is spare, clean, and dry as the shell on its cover, sharply ruffled with conflict and smooth-white with innocence. Within the first two pages of reading this, I felt Castro's plumb line dropping dead center into the navy waters of the heart and the shifts of humanity. Her words lifted me from sentence to sentence like crumbs on the edge of knife. Which is a bit how I felt when I first met Joy Castro through AROHO – her eyes are quiet, dark, and piercing, as if peeling you like an apple, collecting bits of information about you while she smiles. A favorite new writer in my book.
September 2, 2015
Joy Castro captures some of the heart wrenching parts of growing up.
Most of this book doesn't read like collected essays - instead the pieces blend together and tell a story about identity and adulthood. The comparison's between the author's life growing up and life at the university are startling and wonderful.
Heartfelt and insightful this is a short, wonderful collection of essays.
Most of this book doesn't read like collected essays - instead the pieces blend together and tell a story about identity and adulthood. The comparison's between the author's life growing up and life at the university are startling and wonderful.
Heartfelt and insightful this is a short, wonderful collection of essays.
October 5, 2012
Stunning collection of essays. Reading these essays is like sitting down for coffee with a really smart, genuine friend.
February 27, 2013
I really enjoyed this little collection. Fascinating and inspiring. There are several I think some of my students could benefit from.
April 16, 2016
One of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time.
March 27, 2016
Joy Castro is an amazing author - I love her honesty and her truth about growing up. This book was a great book of essays about her life. Loved it.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews