Contributor Spotlight: Daniella Castillo Vasquez
"The process of migrating to America completely altered the way I understand life and justice. The desire to understand that decision drives me to the page every day."
Castillo Vasquez's story, "In Transit," appears in Issue 44.3.
What do you hope readers linger with after reading "In Transit"?
I hope that, if you are able to and it is healthy for you to do so, you call your mom. My relationship with my mother is not without its difficulties and flaws, but I appreciated the time writing this piece gave me, to think about her.
To remember her and invent her, to learn about womanhood through her lived experience, taught me a lot about my own womanhood. It also taught me a lot about her. I’m really grateful I allowed myself to make her whole, as best as I knew how.
Ask your mother who she is outside of you, maybe who she was before you. Get to know the women in your family, remind them that love is more than sacrifice. Greet them not as mother, or grandmother, or auntie, but by their first name, their own name. Maybe readers will be surprised by the person they meet.
What’s a line or moment from your piece that still stays with you?
This is a fiction piece, but Mami, the character, is profoundly inspired by my own mother and is an exploration of my fear of losing her. I’m afraid of losing my mother, not only to death, but also to life, to time and its relentlessness. This moment in my story captures that feeling: “The older I get, the more I realize one day I will become imaginary. But I can’t help inventing my mom. I really wish I could have met her then, although she is colossal right here, in this darkened, hot living room.”
If I was asked to distill the entire story into a few sentences, I would choose those, because the older I get, the older my mother gets, and the versions of ourselves we both were when we first met twenty six years ago have turned into memories harder and harder to materialize in my mind’s eye with each passing year. I spend a lot of time remembering her, and thus inventing her. I have to remind myself to love her now, too. Love who she was, yes, and love who she is, especially.
How do place and geography shape your writing?
I am from the Dominican Republic. My work is focused on complex family ties and loyalties that transcend blood and blend into culture and community. It fills me with pride to be Dominican. My country is also a place that has disappointed me profoundly. It rejected and continues to reject essential parts of my existence as a queer woman. It has perpetuated the rejection of parts of its own existence, its Blackness, and its history.
Leaving the Dominican Republic shaped me as much as loving it did, because it has allowed me to look at it from afar, and paint a clearer picture of it in my mind. I live in the United States now, a country for which I also hold love and disappointment, and that doesn’t feel entirely mine either. My writing, much like me, finds itself moving from my island to America, from home to home. Some of it exists precisely at the borderline between both worlds, where there is space for contradictions, and all of it is true. The process of migrating to America completely altered the way I understand life and justice. The desire to understand that decision drives me to the page every day.
What are you reading right now?
I made it my mission this year to read all of Toni Morrison’s fiction. She is one of my greatest writing inspirations and a masterful storyteller. As I write about family, community, culture, and memory, I find myself constantly gravitating towards literature that approaches similar themes. Nobody writes a community like Toni. I am on my second to last Toni Morrison novel, Paradise, and somehow, she continues to outdo herself. Perhaps her work has taught me how to be a better reader as well, and now I have a better understanding of her narrative voice. It’s just such a delight every time to see how she makes entire towns come to life in her novels. It’s definitely something I aspire to capture in my own writing one day.
Aside from Toni Morrison’s work, and as part of my research for my MFA thesis, I am reading as many generational novels as I can. I’ve read quite a few so far, but the next one on my list is Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia.
What does it mean to you to appear in Callaloo?
I am profoundly honored. I frankly cannot think of a more accurate word to describe the feeling of absolute gratitude I’ve been feeling since "In Transit" was first accepted. Callaloo has been a home for the work of some of my favorite authors, literary figures I admire. To appear alongside so many amazing writers and creatives in such an impactful publication is nothing short of a dream come true. It’s affirming as an emerging writer, of course, but it is also so exciting to know the piece is out in the world, to be read and explored by others who will find meaning of their own in it.
What are you working on right now?
Right now, as I wrap up my time in my MFA program, I am writing more than ever. I’ve recently written a few short stories that I’m excited to find a home for. My mother and brother still live in North Carolina, where we first landed when we arrived in the United States. I’ve since moved away, but for the first time I’ve started drafting a story set in the Carolinas with the immigrant experience at its center. It’s been incredible to transport myself over there and put my mom’s haunted house on the page. I haven’t read many stories about Dominicans in that part of the South, but I promise we are there!
Furthermore, I’ve been dedicating most of my time to writing my first novel, my thesis I hope to defend this upcoming May. The novel will follow the “cursed” lineage of one family, starting with one young girl. Spanning a century of Dominican life, the novel explores how the fulfillment of these prophecies was perhaps tied to both supernatural beliefs and the real hardships of their time. Where did the lines blur between magic and reality during these lifetimes?
DANIELLA CASTILLO VASQUEZ
is a fiction writer and multimedia storyteller based in Boulder, Colorado, originally from Santo Domingo. Having lived in the Dominican Republic for most of her life, her work typically explores ties of culture, memory, and history. She writes about relationships familiar, romantic, and platonic, with Dominican, folklore, superstition, tradition, and storytelling practices as central parts of the narrative. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction from the University of Colorado Boulder.
