Featured Interview With Janet Constantino
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, which I remember very little about, outside of peering into and falling down storm cellar stairs and watching my grandmother, my mother, and my namesake, Aunt Janet, peeling vegetables – onions, which made my mother cry – in a large, old-fashioned kitchen.
We moved when I was four, from Omaha to Southern California, and then to San Jose, California, where I lived until I graduated from college, at 21. From there I’ve moved progressively north, and now I live in Sonoma California with my husband, my sweet labradoodle, Cassie, and a prankster tuxedo cat named Willow.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
The feel and smell of opening a new library book was very thrilling to me, as a child. I read at a very young age, and memorized the alphabet forwards and backwards because I had pictures on the wall of my room with the alphabet around the borders. And I had a small chair in my room, where I would sit and read. That’s where the world was exciting, inside books!
I started writing in high school, after a highly esteemed teacher, Mr. Bloom, wrote on one of my papers that I had the makings of a writer. Especially, if I would learn to link my observations of people into a story, or a scene. His praise awakened something in me I hadn’t seen about myself.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite genre is literary fiction, although I do like a good mystery. My favorite authors include Louise Erdrich, John Banville, Elena Ferrante (her Brilliant Friend series set mostly in Naples really inspired me), William Faulkner, Hemingway, Ian Mc Ewan, Ann Tyler, Henry James, particularly Portrait of a Lady. Two of my all-time favorites are Middlemarch, by George Eliot, and The City of Your Final Destination, by Peter Cameron. Jane Austen, of course, and one of the most beautifully written books in the English language is The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Still Life, by Sarah Winman was inspiring and wonderfully written. I’m inspired by books where the characters come to know themselves and struggle to live true to that knowledge.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
A friend asked me, “If you could write about anything you wanted, what would that be?” I thought immediately of Sicily, (I’m half-Sicilian, and have relatives there), and then of a young Sicilian woman trying to break free from her overbearing mother, and from a culture that has historically kept women in traditional roles of housewife, cook, and mother, even if they’re educated and have or aspire to careers. So Mariella is such a young woman, and with the help of her Nonna, her grandmother, she escapes to San Francisco., where her struggle to live her own life continues. One can leave the culture, but does the culture ever leave you?
I also took inspiration for Becoming Mariella from my psychotherapy clients who have dared to follow their own paths, and from my own challenges along the way.
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