parenting now

>> author ana castillo, writes aboutfeminism, parenthood and mass incarceration in her new bookblack dove, mama, mejo and me. in the memoir, castillo who nowlives in southern new mexico looks at her own childhood as amexican-american growing up in chicago, and her experienceraising her son as a single parent. our correspondent megan kamerickrecently sat down with her to talk about identity, modernsocial issues and her work as a writer.

>> ana castillo, it is really anhonor to have you here on new mexico infocus. >> thanks for inviting me. >> you have a rich career, anarray of poems, of novels and now a memoir. what sparked the idea to do amemoir? >> well, the memoir collectionis a combination of personal essays and memoir over the yearsthat i have done some essays for magazines or online venues likesalon.com or more magazine,

those are in the book. and i have also given keynoteaddresses so at some point i was wanting and hoping, desiring tobe able to put all this together. initially i thought aboutcalling it my mother's mexico after an essay in the book whichis the earliest essay, 20 years old, that i wrote in mid 90's. but, as time went on, i becamemore mother than daughter and so the more recent, current workthat is now unpublished and

really is the heart of the bookis memoir part. and as i tell my students andpeople that come to the workshop regarding memoirs, you have towrite what is yanking at your heart. it is your truth and yourjourney. that is actually was impulse tobegin putting it all together when i sat down and felt i haveto write what i have to write right now. >> you had a really complicatedrelationship with your mother.

she was emotionally distant, alot. what evolved as you became amother in terms of whether you wanted to raise your son in adifferent way? >> mothers and daughters we havecomplex relationships even when they are positive and great. there are periods of time inwhich the differences are there more than the things alike andso on. and, then we realize at acertain point in our lives maybe when we become mothers,certainly as adults, we see

ourselves looking and behavingmore like our mothers everyday and i realize i have a lot of mymother in me now. i am cognizant of that everyday,very somber, serious, very disciplined and her ways, shewent to do factory work everyday. i go to my desk and writeeveryday. i have the same kind ofcommitment but where i learned the gentleness and i talk aboutthis also in the memoirs, the gentleness, unconditionalloving, doting, the one that

can't say no, was from mygrandmother that raised me as a child. and another figure that i alsogive credit to who also became my friend as an adult was mymother's sister who was the complete opposite ofpersonality. very gregarious, despite herhardships and we became friends as grown women. we could talk about everythingtogether. so, i think it is really acombination of influences that

makes us who we are when webecome parents. we reject some of the thingsfrom our parents and other things we don't even know how itis that we are repeating it. >> you grew up in chicago, veryturbulent time, late 60's and 70's, and you often feltalienated as a chicago chicana. do you think that changed asyour son was growing up or did he have the same kind ofalienation? was it different for him. >> it is a different world inthe sense that we have much more

consciousness about people'scolor. we are not so ethnically dividedin the sense that in my day we were mexican, we were greek,italian, african american or black was the term used in 60's. polish and so on.and now there is a lot of mixtures, intermarriages, largeindian asian community, nevertheless as we allunfortunately hear, chicago, like los angeles, boston,baltimore, all our cities, unfortunately are very, veryaware right now of the fact that

we haven't dealt with our issuesaround race and our class and how we see our young people,especially our young men of color and they could be chicano,latino, black, puerto rican or they could be mixed palestinian,with jewish, for example. the thing is they look differentand something about a young male of color in the street ismenacing. and that menacing is whatappears to be a great trigger for the threat against theseyoung men. they are not the threat, it isthe threat against them.

that is what i also talk aboutin my memoirs is being the single mother of a young man ofcolor despite the fact that i put him into good schools, ifyou will, and instilled the same values that we all instill forour children, travon martin's mother and father instilled inhim, when they leave our homes, when they walk out the doors,they are no longer our beloved children that we raised, ourbaby, now they are viewed by society as a menace. and so that was really what wasbehind my wanting to write about

in this book. >> you write that you came tounderstand that he lived in a parallel world, as you say, whenhe left your home, even with great influences, he walked outthe door a young brown man on the streets of chicago and youwrite that for such young men today survival means nothingshort of staying alive. so, how did that play out foryour son as he grew up? >> he did well in school, hewent through high school pretty easily.

he was in the string symphony,played cello, all that time was in the internationalbaccalaureate program so as far as i could see as a parent hewas fine. i didn't have any reports fromschool as far as even needing help with tutoring. you know, so, that was great andthen time came to go to college, no problem, they had preparedhim for that. it was a given, given that ibelieve in education, i was a college professor and do teachhigher education, so, he picked

the university in chicago andsame thing, went right through school. all that fine. somewhere between the ages of 17and now 20's he was doing graffiti, you know, and he gotvery involved in the hip hop culture. i am not criticizing or blamingthe culture for his depression, mental condition, his issueswith the police and with authorities and so on thatensued.

it really is a reflection, areal one that we have to deal with in our society, we areseeing it everyday. we are seeing these cases invarious cities with individuals that have been picked on andlives have been taken away and we see disparity between howthey are treated and certain other people in similarcommunities are not targeted. that was the reality for him asa young man of color. every time he left home, or whenhe wasn't in school, or even as the university student.

>> so, he was a great student asyou say and then you write as a chicana mother, i love thisimage, that your job was to sort of move ahead of him and setluminarias on his path to try and guide him. but he kind of spiraled down,ended up committing a robbery and then in prison for twoyears. we all know the kind of shamingthat can do in society around single mothers especiallymothers of color. did you feel responsible?

>> i did and i do think that istrue. he was no longer on my watch. this was after college. he finished school, he formed afamily, had a child, he had a really very nice decent job.and, as i said, all of these things were going on and he wasspiraling mentally as far as his well-being. he was very unhappy. i could see that and didn't knowhow to reach out.

he is an adult man, 23, 24, 25,26 and i see that. i see something isn't right anda lot of that had to do with that observation of society andthe way he saw himself as a man on the street and so on.and, when he was arrested, i was out of the country. i was speaking and when i cameback, i really was completely shocked. i was traumatized. i did not expect that of him.

he didn't have a history ofthat. there was no indication, therewas no call for it. but it was really, i think, hisway of just jumping over that fence and saying, you know, thisis all -- this is all that i can do. i really don't know whathappened to him. he didn't look really connected. i do suspect that there was somedrug use. i don't know what it was.

he is fine now. i have never seen him use it soi can't say. he is on board with everythingthat i have written about. he has gone and appeared at someof my book signing. we are telling our story becauseit is a story of a lot of families and, indeed, i havebeen told for many years that he needed to have a man in hislife. i encouraged him to have arelationship with his father who had moved on with another familyand like many men when they do

that, they don't have time forthe families they formed previously. those are things we have to lookat. i felt that i was blamed as asingle mother and as a woman and how obvious that this wouldhappen because he had no male role model. >> you had a friend who actuallysaid, in a way, being in prison was god's way of saving hislife. how did that happen?

how did you help him come backto himself? >> well, i did. it was interesting in readingback those essays. as child i also come from a veryhumble background, family. my family were factory workers. a had a lot of books andliterature and books are my guide and they taught me aboutfeminism and about many things about my history about myancestry, and i always instilled this reading to my child.

so, when he went away, i beganby sending him books. we would read them together. i would read the same book, readpoetry or we talk about art. i got him to start writing. through the writing he began tocommunicate. there is that disassociation. now, there is some other placesin your brain where you have to begin to make connections andover that period of time, that is exactly what happened.

he began to write, he wasreading, he began to get excited about his life and had plans andso, at the very end of his time i actually saw him being able tohave a conversation and begin to talk about the music he used toplay when he was a cellist, which he no longer had beeninterested in. >> so, what are your thoughtsabout your son over the last year as we have seen thesestories dominate in the media about young men of color in thehands of police. >> my heart was completelybroken when i saw my son so

unhappy and nothing pains aparent more than to see their child unhappy, for whateverreason. with the killing of travonmartin and many of the other stories that we are payingattention to now, my heart is with their families. my son committed a robbery, hepled guilty. it was uncalled for. he did his time but he falls inthat category of targeted group of young people of color thatdespite anything else that goes

on in their lives, in the publiceye, they are targeted as being menaces. there comes a time for some, notall, they begin to act like that. i too was an angry young womanfor a very long time. i used writing as an outlet. but, you can only bemarginalized and called certain things and expect them to be acertain way, whether or not that is how you are, so long, beforeyou begin to just not care about

it anymore. or it is sort of like aself-fulfilling prophecy. >> he is now in a good place? >> it is happy ending. he works in grass rootsorganizing, he is co-parenting now, his beautiful young littlegirl. and, he has just taken the lsat,you know, considering law. but those were his twenties. not everybody survive their 20'svery well but he did get on

board with me and there is someof his writing in the book as well.

his voice is heard there too. >> well, ana castillo, thank youso much for talking with us about your son. >> thank you.