Interview: Laughing Along With I'm Sorry You Feel That Way Author Diana Joseph

I hadn’t laughed so much since, well, since reading Diana Joseph’s memoir I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog. The bio at the back of I’m Sorry You Feel That Way says that “Diana Joseph teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.” True, but inadequate. Go to Joseph’s website, and you learn that she “has worked as a waitress, a short order cook, a typist, and a teacher…” Also true. Delve a bit further into her website and you begin to get a feel for Diana Joseph – her answers to the FAQ are well worth the read. However, nowhere could I find anything that said that if you call Joseph for an interview, you will laugh and chat about motherhood — including cheating at Candyland (she did, I didn’t), and cutting entire paragraphs from classic children’s books to shorten storytime at night (I did, she didn’t;) social awkwardness; the gullibility of men; and pets for a full ten minutes before the interview can actually begin.

Joseph warned me at the outset, “you have to keep me on track; I’m terrible. I’m capable of going off on tangents forever, and you may not get what you want.” Personally, tangents happen to be some of my favorite things — nonetheless, I had an interview to conduct.

So, having read I’m Sorry You Feel That Way I would guess that you aren’t often found haunting Hallmark stores?
Hallmark stores, no… I made my own Valentines’ Day cards this year. This is what I mean by a tangent. I love to craft – I have the skills of an incompetent third grader, but I basically like to glue pieces of paper to other pieces of paper.

I had an idea that it could be really funny to make these Valentines’ cards that were really pretty on the outside, but when you opened them up, they had pictures of Herpes. I forgot to ask if she meant pictures of the clinical disease or of the virus itself, but after our interview, I would be willing to bet the former.

Clayton, my son [“the boy” in I’m Sorry You Feel That Way] walked into the room as I was Google imaging Herpes. He asked “what are you doing?” When I told him, he asked “who are you sending these cards to?” “My friends.” “Well, do any of your friends have Herpes?” “No, no of course not.” He looked at me and said, “Mom, thousands of people have Herpes. How would you know? I just think that if I had Herpes and I got one of these cards, I would feel really bad.”

Article Author: Christy Corp-Minamiji

Christy Corp-Minamiji is a livestock veterinarian, writer, and mother living in Northern California. She writes fiction and blogs on the eclectic range of topics that interest her.

Visit Christy Corp-Minamiji's author page — Christy Corp-Minamiji's Blog