Why I Read Junot Díaz

Reflecting on his life and work in the face of trauma.

Note: Please read this article with Junot’s history of misogyny in mind. We may love his work but sexual assault is absolutely inexcusable. Additionally, if there’s anything to learn from #MeToo in the literary world, it’s that women authors of colour are not read enough and that’s a terrible thing. Please remember that Junot is an example of the staggering male genius trope that dominates our bookshelves, and which this article feeds into.

Content warning: sexual assault.

Reading Junot’s New Yorker piece shook me awake. It’s about his experience with sexual assault and depression, heartbreak and loneliness, self-loathing and self-destruction — it’s about silence.

“And, let me tell you, once that mask was on no power on earth could have torn it off me.”

I’ve always thought it was just a humble fact that it took 11 years to write The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Of course I see the novel in a new light, but the reality was always there in Oscar, in Drown, in This is How You Lose Her.

“Didn’t matter how far I ran or what I achieved or who I was with — they followed.”

In almost every talk I’ve seen him give, Junot emphasizes his love of readers. As a reader, I’ve been drawn to authors who challenge us, who don’t just want to express ideas but create entirely new worlds. Or they recreate worlds that already exist, but are alien to us on the outside and deeply familiar to those who have experienced it. Junot (Lola in Oscar: “the Dominican James Joyce”) is that kind of author.

“A heartbreak can take out a world.”

When I defended Junot’s use of annotations and pop-culture references in Oscar, I was thinking about the message he was sending about alienation and diaspora, failed masculinity, the search for intimacy, and the painfully human need to understand what the fuck has happened in our lives.

I see something different in the book now, something that was always there in everything he’s written — the suffocating grip of silence.

It hurts to write. It hurts to say the words. But you need it, and if you don’t get it, like Yunior says, “you know it’s never going to come true. Never, ever.”

‘Toni Morrison wrote, “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” In Spanish we say that when a child is born it is given the light. And that’s what it feels like to say the words, X⁠ — . Like I’m being given a second chance at the light.’

I go to school at Cornell University, where Junot did graduate school and about which he wrote the New Yorker piece “MFA vs POC”. When I read that article, I jumped out my seat and started applauding. When I read his piece about sexual trauma last night, I wanted to do the same but for a different reason. I wanted to applaud Junot for doing the hardest thing, for breaking the silence that broke his life.

I will never, ever forget this scene, which finishes a chapter in Oscar:

She awakened just as in her dreams some ciegos were boarding a bus, begging for money, a dream from her Lost Days. The guapo in the seat next to her tapped her elbow. Senorita, this is not something you’ll want to miss.

I’ve already seen it, she snapped. And then, calming herself, she peered out the window.

It was night and the lights of Nueva York were everywhere.

Thank you, Junot.