Tayari's Blog: The Mouthier, The Better

Posted by TayariJones on February 27, 2008 09:39 PM
Filed under Bookshelf

A couple of years ago when I was a visiting writing at George Washington University, I taught a class on Reading and Writing Memoir. My students had lots of different opinions about the ten books on the syllabus, but there was one book they all seemed to dig: The Truth Book by Joy Castro.

One of my favorite scenes in The Truth Book occurs midway through when Joy, an abused child, finds an ally in a irreverent classmate, she nicknames "The Mouthy Girl." When I talked to Joy after the book was published, she mentioned that she and The Mouthy Girl reunited after all these years.

Joy is a blogger these days and she has written the story up on her site. Here's a quote:

In the acknowledgments at the end of the book, I wrote, as the very last line, "And to Beth Loughney, mouthy girl, wherever you are." I hadn't seen her since I was fourteen, a runaway in rural West Virginia, and I didn't expect to. I just wanted to thank her from the bottom of my heart, however I could.

But soon after the book was published, I was contacted by a reader in Arkansas, a TV journalist who was himself an ex-Jehovah's Witness and who, because of his job, had access to vast databases.

"Do you want me to find Mouthy Girl for you?" he offered.

Read the whole story on Joy's new blog. And leave her a comment so she can know you're out there.

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