Junot Diaz interview in Spanish

This interview was published by the arts & culture website REVISTA Ñ which is run by the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín.

I haven’t seen too many interviews with Junot Diaz conducted entirely in Spanish.

An interesting range of topics from his latest novel, the immigrant experience in America, his use of Spanglish in his novel and more.

Junot refers to his sister’s kids as not being “spanglishparlantes”

Hillarious!!!!!!

“Ser inmigrante es como ser alcohólico: eso nunca se quita”

Entrevista al dominicano ganador del Premio Pulitzer 2008, que estará en Buenos Aires para la Feria del Libro.

Logró reconocimiento y atrajo lectores con su primera novela, escrita en un inglés mezclado con castellano que refleja el habla de los inmigrantes.
Por: Patricia Kolesnicov

¿No era que un escritor era, justamente, alguien con gran, gran dominio del lenguaje? ¿Tanto que podían florearse por diferentes registros? Bueno, miren lo que le dice a Clarín Junot Díaz, el dominicano que ganó el año pasado el Premio Pulitzer (el premio literario más importante de los Estados Unidos) por su novela La maravillosa vida breve de Óscar Wao:

—Los amigos míos dicen que hablo un español muertísimo y que también hablo un inglés muertísimo. Entonces, me parece que yo no tengo una lengua donde me siento muy cómodo.

Justamente. Cuando el jurado eligió la novela de Díaz, elegía un texto escrito en el inglés de un inmigrante “latino”, un inglés mezclado, revuelto con alguna de tantas versiones del español. Y elegía también el imaginario, los mitos, los miedos que esos inmigrantes cargaron consigo a través del Caribe. Y los nuevos, los que aprendieron en el Norte.

Díaz, el novelista incómodo en todas sus lenguas, estará en mayo en Buenos Aires para participar en la Feria del Libro, auspiciado por la embajada de Estados Unidos y Revista Ñ. Además de hablar en público y presentarse con escritores, viene a visitar amigos (“Toditos abogados”) y no está en sus planes nada como ver fútbol (“Soy muy aburrido”) ni recorrer ningún lugar en particular (“Yo prefiero la gente a los edificios”).

Desde que le dieron el premio, su libro -es su primera novela, antes había escrito cuentos- entró en las listas de best sellers en los Estados Unidos y su nombre recorrió el continente. ¿Por qué? El dijo por ahí que su historia “sólo podía ocurrir en (norte)América”. La historia del ascenso social. La historia de cómo el chico que creció en un barrio con vista a un basural se volvió un escritor consagrado. “Me da risa -supo decir-, cada vez que estoy en las reuniones de docentes del MIT, la gente anda como ‘Tengo un Premio Nobel’, O ‘Tengo un Premio Pritzker’. Y yo: ‘Mis padres fueron ilegales’”.

En breve (aunque la brevedad impide hacer justicia al libro): la novela premiada cuenta la historia de Óscar De León, un dominicano negro, gordo, y, palabra clave, nerd. Es decir, algo bastante parecido a un “traga”, que además tiene poco éxito en las relaciones sociales. En definitiva: alguien que rompe con el deber ser del estereotipo caribeño: seductor, canchero, deportista. Óscar (le dirán Wao por la pronunicación “latina” de “Wilde”) no es nada de eso. Y no, no le va bien.

Desde Estados Unidos, en el teléfono, Díaz empieza cauteloso, serio. Pero se irá soltando.

—¿Qué tiene que ver su vida con la de Óscar Wao?

—Uf, no mucho.

—Yo pensaba que un poco sí; usted fue a buenas universidades, se escapaba del barrio a la biblioteca…

—Imagínate, no conozco un escritor que no sea nerd. Yo soy nerd-nerd-nerd. Pero no tan nerd como Óscar. Hay niveles: si Óscar es un 8, yo soy un 3.

—Casi normal…

—La mayoría de mis amigos es un 1. No les encanta leer, no les gusta la literatura, no quieren saber de cómics. Dije que soy un 3, vamos a decir un 5, eso es más justo.

—¿Cuáles son sus características como nerd?

—Me encanta leer. Esa es la enfermedad que se me pegó. Mira, si alguien tiene un librero en su casa y, digamos, una botella de ron abierta, yo primero me acerco al librero.

—¿Cómo le dio esa enfermedad?

—Cuando emigré a Estados Unidos, yo tenía seis años. Creo que fue una reacción, una manera de sobrevivir, tú sabes, esa vaina tan difícil de la emigración, a veces un muchacho busca la forma de sentirse capaz, busca una forma de sobrevivir. La lectura me ayudó. Mira, yo vengo de una familia muy militar. A mis hermanos, a mi papá, la única vaina que les interesaba era el boxeo. Para mí, un muchacho sensible, festivo, eso era demasiado salvaje.

—¿Fue difícil en esa familia convertirse en escritor?

—Imagínate, coño. Me tenía que esconder de mi propia familia. Tenía que esconder los libros para que no se burlaran.

—Usted ganó este premio con una novela medio en español. ¿Mejoró la situación de los latinos en Estados Unidos? ¿Las segundas generaciones ya no tienen que abandonar el español?

—El público norteamericano se está acostumbrando a ver un inglés bien mezclado con español. Para un latino, eso significa que se está mejorando el ambiente, porque en los Estados Unidos hay un prejuicio contra el español bastante grande.

—¿Un prejuicio de clase?

—Claro que hay un prejuicio de clase, pero también hay un prejuicio contra el idioma. Yo veo amigos míos, que son riquísimos, blanquitos, que vienen de buenísima familia, y cuando llegan a los Estados Unidos, no hablan ni papa de español.

—Eso los vuelve negros…

—Se vuelven negros, o peor, se vuelven malditos ilegales. Entonces, hay ese prejuicio en la cultura en general. Aunque yo he visto muchos cambios, los Estados Unidos siguen siendo un país, una cultura muy, muy antilatina.

—Ni inglés ni español. ¿Quién entiende su libro completamente?

—Cuando una novela tiene personajes que le llegan a la gente, yo creo que los lectores aguantan mucha mierda. Aunque encuentren palabras que no entienden. Yo creo que gané este maldito público por mis personajes. Y creo que a mucha gente que ha leído esta novela no le importa ni culo la cultura latina, ni quieren saber nada con el español, pero aguantaron por los personajes.

—Y lo que no entendieron, lo imaginaron.

—Tú sabes cómo es eso de leer, el lector está acostumbrado a no conocer muchas palabras. Y hay gente a la que le encanta ver el español mezclado con el inglés.

—Obama también es un hombre “mezcla”. ¿Es un clima de época? ¿Se acabaron los “puros”?

—Yo no creo ser tan optimista. Una cultura como la de Estados Unidos tiene varias ramas. Una es ese punto de vista, que somos todos mezcladitos, que no hay nada que valga la pena que no venga de otras cosas, de diferentes raíces. Pero también hay zonas de la cultura norteamericana que sueñan con una cultura pura.

—Anglosajona.

—Pureza, blanquedad. Dos impulsos existen en Estados Unidos. Nosotros somos la generación que metió a Obama en la Casa Blanca. Pero también la que quiere botar a los inmigrantes. Y ahora… cuando la economía se pone malísima la gente inmediatamente le cae encima a los inmigrantes.

—¿Hay un deseo de quedarse afuera de esa sociedad anglosajona cuando se habla spanglish?

—¡Yo no hablo spanglish, mi amor! Yo soy el único de la familia que habla un español tan muerto, y eso porque me crié con morenos, con african-americans. Mis hermanas, sus hijos, toditos hablan un español perfecto. Y sus hijos no son nada de spanglishparlantes.

—Pero usted escribe en spanglish.

—Bueno, no, porque mira, no es spanglish. Pero hay muchísimos escritores que mezclan inglés y español y nadie les pega spanglish. Yo creo que lo que sucede en esta novela es code-switching (NdeR: la mezcla de varios idiomas en una frase) entre español e inglés. La nueva generación es completamente bilingüe, habla bien los dos idiomas.

—Es decir que usted no le tiene ninguna fe al spanglish como idioma.

—¡Pero por favor! ¡Nunca! No veo al spanglish como un idioma, lo veo como una etapa.

—¿Cómo se siente cuando va a Santo Domingo?

—Es muy complejo. Me siento un inmigrante. Pero de otro tipo que en Estados Unidos.

—¿En Estados Unidos todavía se siente un inmigrante?

—¡Claro! ¿Tú crees que cuando uno domina el idioma y conoce más o menos la cultura eso cambia? Ser inmigrante es como ser alcohólico. Eso nunca se quita. Mis hijos, si nacen acá, no van a ser inmigrantes. Pero yo, siempre. Siempre, siempre, siempre.

Authors pick their 2008 favorite Latino books

I’m not sure how long the Daily News has been doing these Latino book surveys but its become something that I really look forward to at the end of every year.

From this year’s list I’ll be reading Junot Diaz’s pick. A book that takes on an important and timely subject that should be of interest to Latinos. The image of Latinos as its presented or rather misrepresented in US society.

I’ll also check out Arellano’s book. I’m not a big fan of his weekly column but I do read it from time to time. When it’s funny, it’s very funny but when it’s not, it’s quite corny. That said, I am glad for his success. There can never be too many successful Latino writers in the mainstream media.

I will also get into Dark Dude by Hijuelos and Mexican Enough by Stephanie Elizondo Griest. They appear to be powerful books about racial identity and alienation.

Though not mentioned on the list one of the books I asked as a Xmas gift is Next Stop : Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx by Ivan Sanchez. I hope to have good things to say about it.

As far as the Bolaño book. I will get to it someday but my tendency is to not jump in right away into these 900 page behemoths.

nydailynews.com

Authors pick their 2008 favorite Latino books

As author Dagoberto Gilb puts it, 2008 will be remembered for the “Bolaño ‘2666’ rage.”

Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous 900-page masterpiece, whose English translation arrived last month, has been voted the best Latino book of the year in Viva’s annual survey of writers.

Thirteen leading and upcoming authors from Latin America and the U.S. participated, and in the process gave us a peek at what they have in store for next year.

DANIEL ALARCÓN (Peru, California)

Author of last year’s “Lost City Radio” and associate editor of Etiqueta Negra, a literary magazine published in Peru. Next year, he’ll “finish the novel I’m working on. Learn Portuguese.”

PICK: “2666.” Roberto Bolaño. “An absolute monument of a novel, the sort of book that reminds you why you wanted to be an artist in the first place.”

CARMEN BOULLOSA (Mexico, Brooklyn)

Poet, novelist and playwright, this year she won Spain’s Café Gijón award for her novel “El Complot de los Románticos.” “I’m working on an opera with Mexican composer Marcela Rodríguez and a movie based on my novel ‘La Virgen y el Violín.’”

PICK: “2666.” “A masterpiece; extremely disturbing.”

SANDRA CISNEROS (Chicago, San Antonio, Tex.)

A pivotal figure in Chicana literature, next year she will mark the 25th anniversary of her first novel — “The House on Mango Street” — with a 20-city tour. She’s also working on three books: “Infinito” (short stories), “Writing In My Pajamas” (non-fiction) and “Bravo Bruno” (children’s).

PICK: “The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters,” Lorraine López. “I’ve been very fond of this writer since I first selected her ‘Soy La Avon Lady & Other Stories’ for the Curbstone [Press’ Mármol] Prize.”

JUNOT DÍAZ (New York City, Dominican Republic)

This year’s winner of the literature Pulitzer Prize for his goundbreaking first novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”

PICK: “Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race,” Arlene Dávila. “If you want to understand who we really are versus who the U.S. makes us out to be read this fierce amazing book. Dávila is the best of our intellectuals.”

DAGOBERTO GILB (California, Texas)

Leading Chicano author of the anthology “Hecho en Texas” and this year’s novel “The Flowers.” He will publish a new novel next year.

PICKS: “Teeth,” Aracelis Girmay: “So joyful, but complex.”

“Orange County,” Gustavo Arellano: “Intelligent and fearless.”

“Half of the World in Light, New and Selected Poems,” Juan Felipe Herrera: “Not just a loco but an energetic talent.”

“First Stop in the New World,” David Lida: “How it is in Mexico City in actuality, not fantasy.”

LEOPOLDO GOUT (Mexico, New York)

Painter, writer and filmmaker, the author of “Ghost Radio.” He’s working on a graphic novel, two books and a movie. “I’m also producing the first ever Michel Gondry animation film.”

PICK: “Cenizas” (Ashes), by Naief Yehya, to be published next year. “His pages are marked by despair, humor and hope in face of nostalgia, 9/11 and the alienation experienced by living in a foreign land.”

OSCAR HIJUELOS (New York City, Cuba)

Author of the recently published young-adult novel “Dark Dude.” He’s working on “Beautiful Maria of My Soul,” a follow-up to his Pulitzer-winning “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.”

PICK: “Voices in First Person: Reflections on Latino Identity,” an anthology of monologues for Latino kids, by Lori Marie Carlson. “I’m guilty of bias — of course — [Carlson is Hijuelos’ wife] but I wouldn’t recommend it if it wasn’t first rate.”

GUILLERMO MARTÍNEZ (Argentina)

Leading Argentinean novelist, author of “The Book of Murder.” Next year he will publish a collection of short stories, “Los Reinos de la Posición Horizontal.”

PICK: “La Sexta Lámpara,” Pablo De Santis. “A story about the birth of New York’s skyscrapers, boasting extraordinary reflections on the poetry of architecture, and an unforgettable character.”

“El trabajo,” Aníbal Jarkowski. “A novel set in the jobless Argentina of the 90s … An atmosphere between absurdity and nightmare, very far from the usual social portrays of these issues.”

ERNESTO QUIÑONEZ (New York City)

El Barrio-based author of “Bodega Dreams” and “Chango’s Fire.”

PICK: “South By South Bronx,” Abraham Rodríguez. “The guy could have made tons of money if he wrote ‘thug lit’ and not this wonderful, nonlinear, complex noir, which shows he is a true artist.”

SERGIO RAMÍREZ (Nicaragua)

One-time vice president of Nicaragua and the country’s foremost novelist, he recently published “El Cielo Llora por Mí” and is working on a new novel “with all the time in the world,” thanks to a Guggenheim fellowship.”

PICK: “La Breve y Maravillosa Vida de Oscar Wao,” Junot Díaz (translated by Achy Obejas). “It makes me think whether the new Latin American novel is starting to be written in English … A new language, a new kind of mixed literature, the literary triumph of immigrants. The mojada novel.”

DANIEL SERRANO (Chicago, Brooklyn)

Debuted this year with crime novel “Gunmetal Black.” Next year, he will publish “Boogiedown.”

PICK: “Dark Dude,” Oscar Hijuelos. “Subtle coming-of-age story of a teenage Cubano … The experience of discrimination by a ‘White’ Latino highlights the absurdity of hate. Great stocking stuffer for teens.”

ILAN STAVANS (Mexico, New York)

Author and scholar, he recently published the graphic novel “Mr. Spic Goes to Washington.” He’s working on “a book-long essay on immigration” and two anthologies, including “Becoming Americans: 300 Years of Immigrant Writing.”

PICK: “2666.” “Bolaño is such an incredible author, he makes me want to go in prison in order to have endless time to read him.”

ALISA VALDÉS-RODRÍGUEZ (New Mexico, Arizona)

Best-selling author of the chica-lit phenomenon “The Dirty Girls Social Club” (2003) and its 2008 sequel, “Dirty Girls on Top.”

PICK: “Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines,” Stephanie Elizondo Griest. “A phenomenal memoir, by a brave and curious soul.”

Two first-time authors bring fresh Boricua lit right from the streets

Iván Sánchez, autor of the memoir “Next Stop.”

nydailynews.com

Two first-time authors bring fresh Boricua lit right from the streets

By Carlos Rodríguez Martorell

Two Boricua authors from New York are debuting this fall with stories of hard-earned lessons from the streets.

Iván Sánchez’s harrowing memoir “Next Stop” involves guns, drug dealing, addiction, fights and everything a gang member can experience during a lifetime — only he went through all of it before reaching drinking age.

“I was brought up in a pretty harsh environment,” says Sánchez, 32, whose book, which comes out Tuesday, chronicles the violence-infested Kingsbridge section of the Bronx of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

“My mother left New York when I was 15, and she tried to take us to Virginia,” says Sánchez, who decided to stay in the city.

“Because I was pretty much living alone, I was able to just kind of run wild and make all kinds of mistakes.”

And so did dozens of friends who didn’t live to tell about it. “I lost about 15 or 20 friends killed,” he says, unable to recall the exact number.

Sánchez left the Bronx in 1993 and settled in Virginia, where he lives with his wife Stormy Sanchez and three daughters.

A computer technician, he has partnered with actress April Lee Hernández as a youth advocate and motivational speaker.

“I’ve been able to turn my life around,” says Sánchez, although, as a writer, he may have got himself into trouble. In “Next Stop” (Touchstone, $14), he used the real names of some of his ex-friends’ crack dealers, “a crazy idea,” he admits.

“I’ve received a lot of death threats,” he says. “And I have reasons to fear for my life.”

Once he even brought a bullet proof vest when visiting the city but ended up not wearing it. “I figured if someone’s gonna kill me for writing an honest book, maybe there’s a lesson in that as well.”

Author Daniel Serrano never feared for his life, but did lose the first manuscript of his debut novel, “Gunmetal Black” (Grand Central Publishing), on 9/11.

“I was a paralegal at a reinsurance company that had its offices in Tower 2,” says Serrano, 41, a Brooklyn resident who never made it into Manhattan that day.

“I left three years’ worth of work on the hard drive and on a disk next to the computer,” he says.

Serrano rewrote the entire novel, which is the story of Chicago Boricua Eddie Santiago, an ex-con who dreams of settling down in Miami to run a salsa shop but can’t get a break from old friends and corrupt cops.

“Tough neighborhoods are diverse, and so are Latinos,” says Serrano, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Chicago.

“Growing up, I knew ghetto-nerds like Junot Díaz’s Oscar Wao, but I also knew street-smart kids like Eddie. Myself, I walked somewhere in the middle.”

Most of the action and romance packed “Gunmetal Black,” published last month, is set in Chicago’s Paseo Boricua.

“Today, that neighborhood is largely gentrified, but when I grew up, it was notorious for poverty, crime and drugs,” he says. “Nevertheless, it was a ‘home away from home’ for many Puerto Ricans.”

Although they haven’t met yet, both Sánchez and Serrano share a bond with other Boricua crime writers, such as the late Jerry A. Rodríguez, who died of cancer last June.

“When I read about his passing I choked up and felt a loss, because there was something uniting us,” says Serrano, whose next book is “Boogiedown,” a thriller centering on NYPD Detective Cassandra Maldonado.

As for Sánchez, he has just finished co-writing the autobiography of DJ Disco Wiz, “the first Latino hip-hop deejay in the ’70s,” to be published after his unlikely literary debut.

“In my first interviews after the book came out, [in a self-published edition] people kept asking me if I was a fan of [street-wise writers] Piri Thomas and Luis Rodríguez. And to tell you the god-honest truth, I had never heard of any of them,” he says.

“I had never finish reading an entire book in my life.”

Gore Vidal interview

Gore Vidal: Literary feuds, his ‘vicious’ mother and rumours of a secret love child

He slept with Kerouac, hung out with Jackie O and feuded with Mailer. He’s the last surviving giant of American literature’s golden age. So why is Gore Vidal still so sensitive about his reputation?

Seventeen years have passed, I remind Gore Vidal, since he told a reporter: “This is the last interview I shall ever give. I am in the departure lounge of life.” “So where are you now? Tray table in the upright position, footrest stowed, taxiing towards the runway?”

The writer gives me a mutinous look. “How do you know that I didn’t leave? Actually, I’m more fearful of airplanes than I am of my own mechanism, because I know how to run it.

I’ve had diabetes for 20 years. I have a titanium knee. Which is quite strong. But don’t ask for it in the middle of the night.”

With Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer gone, Gore Vidal, 82, is the last truly legendary figure from a golden age of American literature.

Full Article

Junot Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel headed for big screen

Junot Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel headed for big screen

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Dominican author Junot Diaz announced Friday that Miramax is turning his Pulitzer Prize-winning book into a movie, but that he worries how the story will be portrayed.

Diaz, who lives in New York City, told reporters that he doubts Americans could make a good Dominican movie and that they likely will not employ any Dominican actors.

Diaz said he has intentionally become more isolated, rarely going out after winning the fiction prize for his novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” a tragic but humorous story of desire, politics and violence among Dominicans at home and in the United States.

The 39-year-old said he plans to write another book that will be completely different from his first novel, which took him a decade to write.

Diaz also said his book will be translated into Spanish and that he hopes it will not lose its essence.

Diaz left the Dominican Republic at age 7 and moved with his family to New Jersey.

South by South Bronx: Barrio Noir

dailynews.com

Author Abraham Rodriguez delves into Barrio noir in “South by South Bronx”
By Carolina González

A mysterious blond appears naked in the bed of an aimless man who has frequent blackouts. She’s got a pair of Manolo Blahniks, a secret and a gun.

This scenario would fit right in with the hardboiled detective novels from the 1950s, the ones starring cynical gumshoes like Mike Hammer or Philip Marlowe.

Instead, it’s the opening to Abraham Rodríguez’s new novel, “South by South Bronx” (Akashic Books, $15.95), which intersects concerns about terrorism, changes in the drug trade and gentrification with Hitchcockian double-crosses and a mountain of cash.

The novel, Rodríguez’s third, takes the Bronx-born writer’s longtime concerns about Puerto Rican identity and street-level realism and meshes them with the structure of a classic pulp fiction narrative.

“It wasn’t a conscious thing, ‘I’m going to do a mystery book,’” says Rodríguez, whose first novel, the gritty and lyrical “Spidertown,” was published in 1994.

“I always wanted to do something with a Puerto Rican cop, and I’m obsessed with the concept of dragging Puerto Ricans into Americana,” he adds over the phone from Northern California, where he began his book tour last week.

“South by South Bronx” is divided into two narratives, set off by the use of different typefaces.

One follows Sánchez, a Puerto Rican police detective who has been shunned by his fellow officers for investigating a vigilante cop and is now sought out by a federal agent involved in a drugs-money-terrorism case.

Sánchez is a character borrowed from “Spidertown,” which depicted the world of young violent street dealers in the South Bronx.

The other storyline follows Alex, a heartbroken Puerto Rican slacker who has so many alcohol-induced blackouts he never questions the presence of a strange blond woman in his bed.

This story has a subplot involving two Puerto Rican artists, a writer named Monk and a painter named Mink, who are brought out of their creative blocks by the sight of the blond, Ava Reynolds.

“I saw it as two books, a dual narrative,” says Rodríguez. “Some people were disoriented at first reading it, but already in my last book, I was tired of the linear thing.”

Rodríguez’s South Bronx roots have always been a deeply specific source of inspiration, and in this novel, like in his others, it almost becomes a character of its own.

“I’ve always thought of the Bronx as a small town, and I see things changing, I see the world coming into the Bronx,” he says.

Rodríguez calls his novel “a tribute to New York” — a city that has changed, not necessarily for the better in the last decade.

It’s a view he has from Berlin, where he’s been living for the past eight years with his wife, whom he met there.

He says that while he loves his hometown and continues to visit yearly, Berlin has been personally and creatively enriching for him.

“It’s a very open kind of place, aesthetically, and in quality of life. Try walking with a beer down the street here [New York],” he says, citing laws like the city’s indoor smoking ban as “coercive.”

Is he still the “angry young man” he was portrayed as in the mid-1990s, when he denounced the notion of “Latino literature” as one uniform nostalgic immigrant story?

“I’m not angry, I was never angry, I just feel strongly about things,” he says. “The passion is real.”

Junot Díaz snatches Pulitzer Prize, grumbles he’s only 2nd Latino to do so

Junot Díaz snatches Pulitzer Prize, grumbles he’s only 2nd Latino to do so

By Carlos Rodríguez Martorell
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Memo to Pulitzer: It was about time, hombre!

Fresh off winning the top novelist prize in America, Junot Díaz says the literary establishment “should be embarrassed” he’s only the second Latino writer to snatch it.

“Two Latinos in a hundred years? Mmmh. I don’t think the problem is with us as writers. It seems like the problem is with them as judges,” says the Dominican-born, N.J.-raised author of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”

Díaz, 39, got the news of his Pulitzer Prize for fiction last week when he was in his mother’s home with his sister and nephew, in Ridgefield Park, N.J.

“Of course, my mom didn’t know what the hell that meant, but she was excited for me. She was, like, ‘Pulitzer? Okay, sounds great!’ ” Díaz says.

Díaz, who commutes between East Harlem and Boston, says he celebrated the prize by screaming, but he refuses to be considered a Latino hero.

“I just hope to God that this encourages our community,” he says. “We so often are just the constant recipient of bad news. If the Latino community wants to take five minutes to celebrate some Dominican nerd from New Jersey, that’s not a bad idea.”

Author Pete Hamill hailed the award as “a triumph of the entire immigrant deal.”

“Yes: every last Dominican should cheer, here and in the home island,” says Hamill. “But so should every descendant of Irish, Jewish, Italian and other immigrants, every child of separation from the Old Country, every kid whose family broke with the past and came here to make something new. Including literature.”

A professor of creative writing at MIT, Díaz moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 6 years old. His father entered the country illegally.

“I came from an extremely poor background. We had this saying in my family that we were ‘welfare, food stamps and Section 8,’” he says.

After publishing the acclaimed short-stories book “Drown” in 1996, Díaz shook the American literary world to the core with “Oscar Wao,” his first novel, published last September, which also won the National Book Critics Award.

Spanning 60 years, “Oscar Wao,” tells the story of an obese sci-fi fan growing up in Paterson, N.J., and his Dominican family during the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship.

The book taps into at least two literary traditions: the American immigrant experience and the Latin American dictatorship-themed novel.

“Right from the beginning, that was an obsession of mine,” he says. “There’s nothing more fascinating than pulling together the kind of a book and the kind of an audience that normally wouldn’t hang out together.”

Another of the book’s secrets is its incredibly fast-paced rhythm. “I think it would be fair to say that I write in a definitely perico ripiao-meets dungeon-family hip-hop beats.”

“Oscar Wao” is scheduled to be released in Spanish in September.

“Now my mom will be able to read it,” says Díaz, “if she wants to.”

A ‘Wao’ With Words

One of Junot Díaz’s trademarks is his ability to come up with new words or give old Dominicanisms new life.

Here are some from the pages of Díaz’s “Oscar Wao,” and the author’s own definitions:

Ghettonerd: A bookworm such as Díaz, “who grew up poor and of color and urban and in a community that didn’t really value a life of the mind, the pursuit of reading or art.”

Negrapolis One: The New Jersey area where Oscar Wao grew up. “It seems that there is this unending pageant of Latina gorgeousness.”

Culocracy (aka Trujillato): “Whenever I close my eyes and think of the Trujillo regime, or I close my eyes further and think of Thomas Jefferson sneaking off in the middle of the night to rape a slave, I think of Culocracy.”

Pariguayo: From “party watcher,” or Dominican for loser. “In some ways, it’s both a warning and a hero.”

Fukú: A 500-year-old curse that afflicts the Americas. “The first word of the New World.”

Junot Diaz Interview

BOOKS
‘I’m Nobody or I’m a Nation’

Junot Diaz talks about authors and ethnicity, the universality of the Caribbean experience and how sweet it was to win the National Book Critics Circle Award (even if he wasn’t there).

Full Article

Junot Díaz wins National Book Critics Award

Junot Díaz wins National Book Critics Award for ‘Oscar Wao’

The Associated Press

NEW YORK – Stories from the island of Hispaniola were winners Thursday night at the National Book Critics Circle awards: Dominican-American Junot Díaz took the fiction prize for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” and Haitian Edwidge Danticat was cited in autobiography for “Brother, I’m Dying.”

Díaz, whose novel tells of a young, obese Dominican immigrant and his tragicomic quest for love, was on his way to Venezuela on Thursday night for personal reasons and his award was accepted by Sean McDonald of Riverhead Books.

He joked that “some distinct shouting” could probably be heard all the way from Caracas, or at least the muffled sounds of “the vestigial part of his brain being blown.”

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, has about 500 members. There were no cash prizes.

Dagoberto Gilb writes a timeless Chicano tale in ‘The Flowers’

nydailynews.com

Dagoberto Gilb writes a timeless Chicano tale in ‘The Flowers’

By Carlos Rodríguez Martorell
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, February 20th 2008, 4:00 AM

“Not that many years ago I would go to a house in the neighborhood…”

Thus begins Dagoberto Gilb’s recently released “The Flowers” (Grove, $24), a coming-of-age novel about Sonny, a 15-year-old Mexican American growing up amidst an outbreak of racial violence.

But the when-and-where of the story purposely remains as elusive as in the first sentence.

“I guess it’s probably Los Angeles — it just so happens that I grew up in L.A. — and it resembles a riot in [the neighborhood of] Watts in 1965,” says Gilb.

“This isn’t a story about the past. To me, it’s about now,” adds the award-winning author based in Austin, Tex.

In “The Flowers,” the owners of the building where Sonny lives — mistakenly named Los Flores — are trying to prevent blacks from renting. At the same time, Mexican tenants are barely tolerated.

“There are different kinds of racism,” says Gilb. “We [Mexican Americans] are invisible, we don’t matter.”

The author says he’s recently witnessed a growing hostility towards Mexicans. “This anti-immigrant [movement] is literal, but it’s also code for all of us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so strong.”

One of the book’s most poignant stories is Sonny’s relationship with his mother, Silvia. She’s not loving, she barely cooks and she’s detached from her son — definitely not your typical Mexican mother character.

“I think that’s because everyone is so used to stereotypes and that’s really what I’m so sick of,” says Gilb. “Why does the mother have to be making tortillas? Let’s stop it! We don’t have to be wearing sarapes or huaraches or sombreros to be Mexican-Americans.”

A self-described “physical writer,” Gilb says that Sonny’s adventures are very close to him.

I’ve seen a lot of writers that play right out of their mind, their imagination. And I think I don’t have an imagination,” he jokes. “I have to have some experience, something that I have touched, felt.”

Gilb is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, including “The Magic of Blood,” which won the 1994 PEN/Hemingway Award. He was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for his 2003 nonfiction collection, “Gritos.”

The son of a Mexican immigrant and an Anglo father of German descent, Gilb was for years a construction worker and a carpenter before becoming a writer.

“How did that happen to me?” he says of his literary career. “I am constantly thinking I should be the super at a construction site. I was a construction worker for 16 years, 12 of them in unionized rises. There are things I liked but when I was there I was always thinking, ‘God, I wish I could write a story and sell it for $100.’”

Gilb’s constant battle against clichés prompted him to publish, in 2006, “Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature.”

“We’re so disrespected, so invisible, that I thought, well, let’s start with Texas, where the largest and oldest Mexican American community is,” he said.

The anthology covers some 130 writers in the Lone Star State over five centuries, starting with Spanish conquistador Álvaro Cabeza de Vaca, “sort of the first Chicano,” he says, with a smile.

“It’s a portrait of the community,” says Gilb. “You can see your drunk tío, your weeping aunt… You hear all the stories. I didn’t necessarily pick the authors’ best works, mostly I suited the needs that I saw. I wanted somebody to write about jalapeños.”

Interestingly, he doesn’t see the relations of Mexican-Americans and Texas only from the point of view of the oppressed.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t think Texas is as racist towards Mexicans and immigrants as most of the country. Texans really love Mexicans, they love Mexican culture, architecture and food. They understand how valuable the workers are…

“You can even see it in this jerk of a president, George Bush. He reflects that specific thing about Mexicans: He doesn’t have a bad attitude.”