"There are things coming from me that I felt I wanted to talk about. My search for my own blend of spirituality, my acknowledgement of my sexuality, my being the single mother of a young man"
About this Quote
Castillo frames identity not as a label you wear but as material you choose to bring into the room - on purpose, in sequence, with stakes. The phrase "things coming from me" is quietly defiant: her authority isn’t borrowed from institutions, critics, or tradition; it rises from an interior pressure that demands speech. That pressure matters because women of color writers have so often been asked to translate themselves for a mainstream audience while keeping the "messier" parts - desire, faith, ambivalence, motherhood - safely offstage.
The syntax does a lot of work. "My search" signals motion rather than arrival, rejecting any tidy narrative of spiritual certainty. Calling it her "own blend of spirituality" reads like a refusal of doctrinal gatekeeping, especially in a cultural landscape where Catholicism, indigenous practices, and secular feminism can collide and get policed. Then she pairs that with "my acknowledgement of my sexuality" - a deliberate choice of word that suggests sexuality as something long known but not always socially permitted. Acknowledgement implies a public facing; it’s less confession than reclamation.
Ending on "single mother of a young man" sharpens the quote’s social context. Single motherhood is routinely treated as pathology, while raising a son introduces another layer: she is shaping masculinity while navigating structures that scrutinize her. Castillo’s intent is to claim a composite self that literature often fractures into separate genres - the spiritual narrative, the coming-out story, the motherhood memoir. She insists they’re one voice, and that voice will not be edited down for comfort.
The syntax does a lot of work. "My search" signals motion rather than arrival, rejecting any tidy narrative of spiritual certainty. Calling it her "own blend of spirituality" reads like a refusal of doctrinal gatekeeping, especially in a cultural landscape where Catholicism, indigenous practices, and secular feminism can collide and get policed. Then she pairs that with "my acknowledgement of my sexuality" - a deliberate choice of word that suggests sexuality as something long known but not always socially permitted. Acknowledgement implies a public facing; it’s less confession than reclamation.
Ending on "single mother of a young man" sharpens the quote’s social context. Single motherhood is routinely treated as pathology, while raising a son introduces another layer: she is shaping masculinity while navigating structures that scrutinize her. Castillo’s intent is to claim a composite self that literature often fractures into separate genres - the spiritual narrative, the coming-out story, the motherhood memoir. She insists they’re one voice, and that voice will not be edited down for comfort.
Quote Details
| Topic | Single Parent |
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