by DannyHaszard 28 Replies latest social current
Speaker tells her story of growing up in abusive family
Indiana Statesman - 24 minutes ago
... Castro read excerpts from her latest book, "The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah's Witnesses," and embellished information from the book ...
Joy at it again,thata girl....
Readings Listings
TheStranger.com, WA - 6 minutes ago
... University Book Store, 634-3400, 7 pm, free. The Truth Book is a memoir about growing up in a family of Jehovah's Witnesses. Third ...
| The Truth Book
The Portland Mercury, OR - 56 minutes ago ... After class, she was to go to the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall and read from religious literature, or otherwise assume her appointed role within the religion ... |
BY CHAS BOWIE
The Truth Book
by Joy Castro, appearing Oct 31, 11:30 am, Lewis & Clark College; Nov 1, 7 pm, PSU's Student Union
Every year growing up, Joy Castro began the school year with an explanatory note for her teachers. She was not to say the Pledge of Allegiance. If the class decorated for Christmas or Halloween, she was to be excused. Birthday celebrations and cupcakes were also forbidden, and of course, she was not to be present for any discussion of evolution. Slang was verboten, as was the phrase "good luck," since luck doesn't exist and has Satanic connotations. After class, she was to go to the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall and read from religious literature, or otherwise assume her appointed role within the religion as a silent, subservient Witness—the only acceptable position for a young female.
But the annual notes to her teacher didn't outline what really went on after school—the rape, starvation, torture, and psychological abuse that Castro suffered under her evil stepfather.
When Castro was 14, her mother married her second husband, who remains nameless throughout The Truth Book, and Joy's life became a torture story. Aside from the beatings and nightly visits to Joy's bed, her monstrous, fundamentalist stepfather excelled at dealing out psychological torment. Joy and her brother were forbidden from making eye contact with him. He created an exacting system wherein Joy's brother was allowed to eat precisely one-eighth of the stepfather's portion size. (From age 14 to 16, when she lived with her stepfather, Joy did not grow an inch due to malnutrition. After running away, she quickly grew two inches). The stepfather terrorized them so badly for communicating with their actual father that they spent entire visitation weekends mute, communicating only by coughing and blinking.
The second half of The Truth Book is one of the most terrifying narratives I've ever read. Unfortunately, the first 97 pages of the book are unfocused and meandering; if I hadn't been reviewing the book, I never would have continued. Beginning precisely at Chapter Eight, though, Castro's The Truth Book soars in its nightmarish truths—an unforgettable tale of hypocrisy and cruelty.
http://forums.portlandmercury.com/showthread.php?p=1498 Danny has a thread up at their forum join in
Escaping a life of abuse 
Falcon - 1 hour, 9 minutes ago Joy Castro visited SPU last Thursday to read from her novel, "The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah's Witnesses," which is based on her life as an adopted child in an abusive Jehovah's Witnesses home.
Escaping a life of abuse
Author reads story of childhood
| By | Brittany Olson , News Writer |
| Published: 11-9-2005 | |
Book calendar
Sarasota Herald-Tribune, FL - 48 minutes ago
... JOYCE ASTRO will discuss and sign copies of "The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah's Witnesses" at 5 pm Friday at Inkwood Books, 216 S ...
A truly articulately written letter, much of which contains something we can all identify with. What a fine looking lady she's turned out be and with a sound mind at last. I'm particularly pleased that she has her own loving family now. Just goes to show that there really is life after cult!
Thanks for sharing this, Danny!
Ian
| This is the Morning of the BBN on the Watchtower blood issue,subornation of their blood ban and we have this on the news wire to greet us. -------------- In the name of truth |
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In the name of truth
Wade Coggeshall [email protected]
Reporter
Joy Castro knew writing a memoir about her childhood abuse at the hands of a tyrannical stepfather — who twisted Jehovah’s Witness doctrine to suit his own foul value system — would generate negative responses, but she hoped for positive feedback as well.
Not only has that happened, but other developments since the Wabash College English professor published the autobiographical “The Truth Book” have made the experience absolute gravy.
Released in September, “The Truth Book” chronicles, in part, the two-year period in Castro’s life when she and her brother Tony lived with their mom and stepfather in West Virginia.
The stepfather was a church leader in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a hard-line sect of Christianity. He subjected Castro and Tony to constant beatings, starvation and near isolation before Castro ran away and legally emancipated herself to live with her father and his new wife. Tony made his escape six months later.
Jehovah’s Witnesses preach female subjugation to males, an axiom Castro rejected. She later earned her bachelor of arts in English at Trinity University and her master of arts and Ph.D. in the same at Texas A&M.
It was in 2002, when Castro’s father committed suicide, that she began to take stock of her life. At a writer’s retreat in Minnesota a month later, she churned out 300 pages of tight, emotional prose in a feverish three-week time frame. It later formed “The Truth Book,” named after Jehovah’s Witness literature that’s considered required reading.
Since the book’s publication, it’s been reviewed in such periodicals as the Boston Globe and Sacramento News & Review. Subsequent book tours have taken Castro to Tampa and the northwest. Overall she describes her readings and discussions and encounters with readers as positive.
“Most of the reviews have been very nice, certainly as positive as I ever could’ve hoped for, for a book with controversial topics in it,” Castro said. “It’s going to push some people’s buttons, and I understand that. At all the meetings I’ve done, the response has been very warm, and that’s been touching. People have had a lot of questions, made a lot of comments. A lot of people have shared their own experiences because of things I’ve read out loud or they’ve read in the book. So that’s been interesting. It’s been a real way to connect with a huge range of people.”
Outside classrooms and bookstores, “The Truth Book” also has led Castro into other mediums. She’s done readings at Crawfordsville’s Kiwanis Club and a local Presbyterian Church. She was a speaker at the Indiana Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s conference in Bloomington in early December, where she led a workshop on writing as a way of overcoming trauma. These forums have brought Castro face to face with people who have similar stories to tell. It’s the type of response she’s both happy and sad to share in.
“I feel sad for them if their experiences have been negative ones,” Castro said. “I’m glad they’re feeling OK talking about that because I think one of the things that’s problematic for people is a sense of shame or inhibition — that they’re responsible for the abuse that happened to them and that they can’t speak up about that. I’m happy they feel able to communicate. I guess I feel sad that it’s common, but not surprised.”
Castro can share in their discomfort. The toughest part for her has been baring her past to strangers, especially during public readings and the expected discussions that follow.
“I’m a shy person, so getting up in front of people and reading this gut-wrenching, personal material is a challenge,” she said. “I would often go back to my hotel very drained — sort of exhilarated because of all the positive responses and interesting things I learned from other people — but also very tired. It just takes a lot of willpower and effort for me to do that. I think some people really get energy from performing. For me it sucks all my energy, and it’s hard. That challenged my comfort level.”
In one case Castro was able to take potentially inimical feedback and make it productive. While she was sitting in a women’s study course at Indiana State University, “A woman raised her hand and said, ‘I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. Nothing like that ever happened to me. I want to say (your book is) not representative,’ ” Castro said. “I said great, thank you, I’m glad and tell us your story because mine is the story of my individual situation. It’s not a blanket condemnation of a religion. It happened to be weirder to be abused in a situation where people were preaching love and kindness. But abuse happens in lots of religions.”
With the favorable reviews, Castro also can bask in the affirmation she’s received on “The Truth Book” from literary scholars. The book will be taught this spring in graduate and undergraduate creative-writing courses at Ball State University. Kalamazoo College in Michigan will study it in a creative non-fiction class. Other institutions of higher learning, including Texas A&M, plan to incorporate it into their curriculums.
Most important of all, Castro wondered how her own community at Wabash would react to her revelations. The returns have been better than she ever imagined.
“One of the things that was troubling to anticipate was how my students would respond to the book, because it is so personal,” Castro said. “I’d walk into class and wonder what they were thinking. I had such positive, warm responses from students. It’s touched many students personally. Some students have bought extra copies for their moms. That’s been amazing. I always knew Wabash was a very supportive community, but I had no idea how supportive. That was one thing that was unexpected about the book — to be supported by the people you work with every day.”
———
On the Net:
www.joycastro.com
www.wabash.edu
The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah's ...
Psychiatric Services (subscription) - 1 hour ago
The title of Joy Castro's memoir, The Truth Book, refers to the book that Jehovah's Witnesses hand to potential converts, "The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life ...
by Joy Castro; New York, Arcade Publishing, 2005, 230 pages, $25.00 Mary E. Barber, M.D. The title of Joy Castro's memoir, The Truth Book, refers to the book that Jehovah's Witnesses hand to potential converts, "The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life." Joy is adopted at birth by a couple who are Jehovah's Witnesses. Her father is "disfellowshipped" by the Witnesses for smoking when Joy is seven, and her parents later divorce. When Joy is 12, her mother marries an extremely controlling, abusive man who is a Witness elder. For the two years that follow, Joy and her younger brother suffer beatings, starvation, sexual abuse, and isolation from the outside world until Joy is able to run away to her father. The book's main shortcoming is its tabloidesque cover, bright-red with a black banner across the front and a black-and-white photo of Joy and her brother as children. It suggests that the contents will be an exposé of the Jehovah's Witness community. Certainly, the role of the Jehovah's Witness leadership in allowing the abuse to continue plays a central role in the story. The close-knit and separatist nature of the Witness community, their beliefs in corporal punishment for children and the father's dominance in the family, and the secular world's reluctance to interfere with religious practices all work against Joy's efforts to escape her torture. Yet the story resonates much more broadly than an indictment of the Jehovah's Witness community. Above all it is a compelling personal family history and a story of triumph and resilience. In her memoir, we experience how the abuse affects Joy's 12-year-old mind and how it continues to affect her in its aftermath. This thread is interwoven with the story of Joy's father, who buried his Cuban background as a young man in an effort to fit into American society. As Joy tries to piece her father's contradictions together, we learn of the sadness behind the ebullience she witnesses as a young child and of the affairs that ultimately end his first marriage. The book chronicles and tries to make sense of his suicide, which occurs when Joy is in her early thirties and a successful young English professor. She also seems to try to connect her mother's early tendency to berate and emotionally abuse her with her decision to leave her first husband and marry an abusive man. Interestingly, we never find out how Joy's parents became Jehovah's Witnesses or whether they were raised in that faith. Clearly, no easy explanations are available for Joy's parents' behavior or decisions, and the author does not try to offer any. Nor does she give any societal prescriptions to end violence against children. This is simply and powerfully a literate, sensitively written window into one young person's world. Reading about Joy's journey through her horrors and toward making peace with herself and her past may be helpful to others who have experienced abuse and to those who treat them . Footnotes Dr. Barber is clinical director and medical director of the Ulster County Mental Health Department in Kingston, New York.
Joy gets around this article is top rank worldwide for JW news
