Family Trouble

Joy Castro is a professor of both English and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is the author of several books including Island of Bones (winner of an International Latino Book Award in nonfiction), The Truth Book, and How Winter Began: Stories.

• Introduction: Mapping HopeJoy CastroPart 1. Drawing LinesChewing Band-Aids: One Memoirist's Take on the Telling of Family SecretsJill ChristmanSally Could Delete Whatever She WantedPaul AustinCase by Case: When It Comes to Family You Still Have to Talk ToMimi SchwartzAt Its CenterPaul LisickyThe Day I Cried at StarbucksRuth BeharMemory LessonsRigoberto GonzálezThe Part I Can't Tell YouAriel GorePart 2. The Right to SpeakWhat the Little Old Ladies Feel: How I Told My Mother about My MemoirAlison BechdelTruths We Could Live WithRobin HemleyWriting the Black Family HomeFaith AdieleThe Deeper End of the Quarry: Fiction, Nonfiction, and the Family DilemmaDinty W. MooreMama's VoicesSusan OldingLiving in Someone Else's ClosetSusan ItoPart 3. Filling the SilenceThe True StoryKaren Salyer McElmurrayI Might Be FamousRalph James SavareseA Spell against Sorrow: Writing My Father InJudith Ortiz CoferThings We Don't Talk AboutAaron Raz LinkYou Can't Burn EverythingAllison Hedge CokeDone with Grief: The Memoirist's IllusionSandra ScofieldPart 4. Conversations of HopeThe Seed BookStephanie Elizondo GriestCalling BackLorraine M. LópezLike Rain on DustRichard HoffmanThe Bad Asian DaughterBich Minh NguyenYour Mother Should KnowSue William SilvermanWriting about FamilyHeather SellersGratitudeSource AcknowledgmentsContributors

"For any writer of memoirs . . . a must-read."—Publishers Weekly "[Family Trouble is] a well-balanced panoply of family-centric musings from authors conflicted between responsibility and retribution."—Kirkus "Those who are writing in the genre would benefit greatly from these authors' self-questions, doubts, and concerns for others whose silences they have broken."-Lavona Reeves, Great Plains Quarterly "Writers of memoir will find this book helpful in thinking through their own decisions; readers of memoir will be interested in understanding the anguish that goes on behind the scenes."-Laurie Hertzel, Star Tribune "The writers in Joy Castro's Family Trouble tell moving stories that probe the ethics of our choices and their consequences when we write about our family members. I know I'll be recommending this book to my students for years to come."—Lee Martin, author of Such a Life and From Our House"What a valuable anthology! And how many times over the years I have taught creative nonfiction would I have reached for this anthology, with its testimonies to the fine lines these writers have drawn, and crossed, and recrossed, and regretted, and celebrated."—Mary Clearman Blew, author of This Is Not the Ivy League