Junot Díaz
Encyclopedia
Junot Díaz is a Dominican
-American
writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT). Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
, in 2008.
, Dominican Republic
. He was the third child in a family of five. Throughout most of his early childhood, he lived with his mother and grandparents while his father worked in the United States. Díaz emigrated to Parlin, New Jersey
in December 1974, where he was re-united with his father. There he lived less than a mile from what he has described as "one of the largest landfills in New Jersey".
He attended Madison Park Elementary and was a voracious reader, often walking four miles in order to borrow books from his public library. At this time Díaz became fascinated with apocalyptic films and books, especially the work of John Christopher, the original Planet of the Apes
films, and the BBC
mini-series Edge of Darkness
. Díaz graduated from Cedar Ridge High School (now merged to form Old Bridge High School
) in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey
in 1987. Though he would not begin to write formally until years later, Díaz was introduced to writing during this time in the form of composing twenty to thirty page letters to his brother, who was hospitalized with Leukemia
for long stretches of their childhood.
He attended Kean College in Union, New Jersey
for one year before transferring and ultimately completing his BA
at Rutgers College
in 1992, majoring in English; there he was involved in Demarest Hall
, a creative-writing, living-learning, residence hall, and in various student organizations. He was exposed to the authors who would motivate him to become a writer: Toni Morrison
and Sandra Cisneros
. He worked his way through college by delivering pool tables, washing dishes, pumping gas, and working at Raritan River Steel. Reflecting on his experience growing up in America and working his way through college in 2010, Diaz said: "I can safely say I've seen the US from the bottom up...I may be a success story as an individual. But if you adjust the knob and just take it back one setting to the family unit, I would say my family tells a much more complicated story. It tells the story of two kids in prison. It tells the story of enormous poverty, of tremendous difficulty."
After graduating from Rutgers he was employed at Rutgers University Press
as an editorial assistant. He earned his MFA
from Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York
in 1995, where he wrote most of his first collection of short stories. Currently, Díaz teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
as the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing and is also the fiction editor for the Boston Review
. He is active in the Dominican American community and is a founding member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Writing Workshop, which focuses on writers of color. Diaz was a Millet Writing Fellow at Wesleyan University
, in 2009, and participated in Wesleyan's Distinguished Writers Series.
magazine, which listed him as one of the 20 top writers for the 21st century. He has also been published in Story
, The Paris Review, and in the anthologies The Best American Short Stories four times (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories
(2009), and African Voices. He is best known for his two major works: the short story collection Drown (1996) and the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
(2007). Both were published to critical acclaim and he won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
for the latter.
Diaz has received a Eugene McDermott
Award, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award
, the 2003 US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
at Harvard University and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was selected as one of the 39 most important Latin American writers under the age of 39 by the Bogotá World Book Capital
and the Hay Festival
.
In September 2007, Miramax acquired the rights for a film adaptation of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
The stories in Drown focus on the teenage narrator's impoverished, fatherless youth in the Dominican Republic and his struggle adapting to his new life in New Jersey. Reviews were generally strong but not without complaints. The titles in the collection include "Ysrael", "Fiesta, 1980", "Aurora", "Drown", "Boyfriend", "Edison, New Jersey", "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie", "No Face", and "Negocios". Diaz read twice for PRI
's This American Life
: "Edison, New Jersey" in 1997 and "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie" in 1998. Díaz also published a Spanish translation of' Drown, entitled Negocios. The arrival of his novel (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
) in 2007 prompted a noticeable re-appraisal of Diaz's earlier work. Drown became widely recognized as an important landmark in contemporary literature—ten years after its initial publication—even by critics who had either entirely ignored the book or had given it poor reviews.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was published in September 2007. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani
characterized Díaz's writing in the novel as:
Writing for Time, critic Lev Grossman said that Díaz's novel was "so astoundingly great that in a fall crowded with heavyweights--Richard Russo
, Philip Roth
--Díaz is a good bet to run away with the field. You could call The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao... the saga of an immigrant family, but that wouldn't really be fair. It's an immigrant-family saga for people who don't read immigrant-family sagas."
In addition to the Pulitzer, The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao was awarded the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize
, the National Book Critics Circle Award
for Best Novel of 2007 the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
, the 2008 Dayton Literary Peace Price for Fiction, the 2008 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award
, and the Massachusetts Book Awards
Fiction Award in 2007. Díaz also won the James Beard Foundation
's MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his article "He'll Take El Alto", which appeared in Gourmet
, September 2007. The novel was also selected by Time
and New York Magazine as the best novel of 2007. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, Los Angeles Times
, Village Voice, Christian Science Monitor, New Statesman
, Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly
were among the 35 publications that placed the novel on their 'Best of 2007' lists. The novel was the subject of a panel at the 2008 Modern Language Association
conference in San Francisco.
In February, 2010, Diaz's contributions towards encouraging fellow writers were recognized when he was awarded the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, alongside Maxine Hong Kingston
and poet M.L. Liebler
. Also in February 2010, Diaz contributed a highly negative critical assessment of the presidency of Barack Obama to The New Yorker
. writing in his essay "One Year: Storyteller-in-Chief":
, from Pro-Libertad, to the Dominican Workers' Party (Partido de los Trabajadores Dominicanos), and the Unión de Jóvenes Dominicanos (lit. "Dominican Youth Union"). He has been critical of immigration policy in the United States
. With fellow author Edwidge Danticat, Díaz published an op-ed piece in The New York Times condemning the illegal deportation of Haitians and Haitian Dominicans by the Dominican government.
On May 22, 2010, it was announced that Diaz had been selected to sit on the 20-member Pulitzer Prize board of jurors. Diaz described his appointment, and the fact that he is the first Latino to be appointed to the panel, as an "extraordinary honor".
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT). Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a best-selling novel written by Dominican author Junot Díaz. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey where Díaz was raised and deals explicitly with his ancestral homeland's experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo...
, in 2008.
Early years
Díaz was born in Villa Juana, a neighborhood in Santo DomingoSanto Domingo
Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,294,385 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...
, Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
. He was the third child in a family of five. Throughout most of his early childhood, he lived with his mother and grandparents while his father worked in the United States. Díaz emigrated to Parlin, New Jersey
Parlin, New Jersey
Parlin is an unincorporated area in Old Bridge Township and Sayreville in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. The area is served as United States Postal Service ZIP Code 08859....
in December 1974, where he was re-united with his father. There he lived less than a mile from what he has described as "one of the largest landfills in New Jersey".
He attended Madison Park Elementary and was a voracious reader, often walking four miles in order to borrow books from his public library. At this time Díaz became fascinated with apocalyptic films and books, especially the work of John Christopher, the original Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes (1968 film)
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly and Linda Harrison...
films, and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
mini-series Edge of Darkness
Edge of Darkness
Edge of Darkness is a British television drama serial, produced by BBC Television in association with Lionheart Television International and originally broadcast in six fifty-five minute episodes in late 1985...
. Díaz graduated from Cedar Ridge High School (now merged to form Old Bridge High School
Old Bridge High School
Old Bridge High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school that serves students in ninth through twelfth grades from Old Bridge Township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Old Bridge Township Public Schools...
) in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey
Old Bridge Township, New Jersey
Old Bridge Township is a Township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2000 United States Census, the township had a total population of 60,456...
in 1987. Though he would not begin to write formally until years later, Díaz was introduced to writing during this time in the form of composing twenty to thirty page letters to his brother, who was hospitalized with Leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
for long stretches of their childhood.
He attended Kean College in Union, New Jersey
Union Township, Union County, New Jersey
Union is a Township in Union County, New Jersey, United States. In the 18th century, the area that is now Union was then called Connecticut Farms...
for one year before transferring and ultimately completing his BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
at Rutgers College
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
in 1992, majoring in English; there he was involved in Demarest Hall
Demarest Hall
Demarest Hall is a dormitory that is part of Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. It is named for Reverend William Henry Steele Demarest, who was the eleventh President of Rutgers College from 1906 to 1924.-General information:...
, a creative-writing, living-learning, residence hall, and in various student organizations. He was exposed to the authors who would motivate him to become a writer: Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
and Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories...
. He worked his way through college by delivering pool tables, washing dishes, pumping gas, and working at Raritan River Steel. Reflecting on his experience growing up in America and working his way through college in 2010, Diaz said: "I can safely say I've seen the US from the bottom up...I may be a success story as an individual. But if you adjust the knob and just take it back one setting to the family unit, I would say my family tells a much more complicated story. It tells the story of two kids in prison. It tells the story of enormous poverty, of tremendous difficulty."
After graduating from Rutgers he was employed at Rutgers University Press
Rutgers University Press
Rutgers University Press is a nonprofit academic publishing house, operating in Piscataway, New Jersey under the auspices of Rutgers University.-History:...
as an editorial assistant. He earned his MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
from Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
in Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
in 1995, where he wrote most of his first collection of short stories. Currently, Díaz teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
as the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing and is also the fiction editor for the Boston Review
Boston Review
Boston Review is a bimonthly American political and literary magazine. The magazine covers, specifically, political debates, literature, and poetry...
. He is active in the Dominican American community and is a founding member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Writing Workshop, which focuses on writers of color. Diaz was a Millet Writing Fellow at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
, in 2009, and participated in Wesleyan's Distinguished Writers Series.
Work
His short fiction has appeared in The New YorkerThe New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine, which listed him as one of the 20 top writers for the 21st century. He has also been published in Story
Story (magazine)
Story was a magazine founded in 1931 by journalist-editor Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. Showcasing short stories by new authors, 67 copies of the debut issue were mimeographed in Vienna, and two years later, Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley...
, The Paris Review, and in the anthologies The Best American Short Stories four times (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
(2009), and African Voices. He is best known for his two major works: the short story collection Drown (1996) and the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a best-selling novel written by Dominican author Junot Díaz. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey where Díaz was raised and deals explicitly with his ancestral homeland's experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo...
(2007). Both were published to critical acclaim and he won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
for the latter.
Diaz has received a Eugene McDermott
Eugene McDermott
Eugene McDermott was a geophysicist and co-founder of first of Geophysical Service and later of Texas Instruments.Born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 12, 1899. He graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919 with a mechanical engineering degree.-Early career:Upon graduation,...
Award, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award
PEN/Malamud Award
The PEN/Malamud Award and Memorial Reading honors "excellence in the art of the short story", and is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. The selection committee is composed of PEN/Faulkner directors and representatives of Bernard Malamud's literary executors.The award was first given...
, the 2003 US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is an educational institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the semiautonomous components of Harvard University. It is heir to the name and buildings of Radcliffe College, but unlike that historical institution, its focus is directed...
at Harvard University and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was selected as one of the 39 most important Latin American writers under the age of 39 by the Bogotá World Book Capital
World Book Capital
World Book Capital is a title bestowed by UNESCO to a city in recognition of the quality of its programs to promote books and reading and the dedication of all players in the book industry....
and the Hay Festival
Hay Festival
The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales for ten days from May to June. Devised by Norman and Peter Florence in 1988, the festival was described by Bill Clinton in 2001 as "The Woodstock of the mind"...
.
In September 2007, Miramax acquired the rights for a film adaptation of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
The stories in Drown focus on the teenage narrator's impoverished, fatherless youth in the Dominican Republic and his struggle adapting to his new life in New Jersey. Reviews were generally strong but not without complaints. The titles in the collection include "Ysrael", "Fiesta, 1980", "Aurora", "Drown", "Boyfriend", "Edison, New Jersey", "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie", "No Face", and "Negocios". Diaz read twice for PRI
Public Radio International
Public Radio International is a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI's tagline is "Hear a different voice." PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources...
's This American Life
This American Life
This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...
: "Edison, New Jersey" in 1997 and "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie" in 1998. Díaz also published a Spanish translation of' Drown, entitled Negocios. The arrival of his novel (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a best-selling novel written by Dominican author Junot Díaz. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey where Díaz was raised and deals explicitly with his ancestral homeland's experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo...
) in 2007 prompted a noticeable re-appraisal of Diaz's earlier work. Drown became widely recognized as an important landmark in contemporary literature—ten years after its initial publication—even by critics who had either entirely ignored the book or had given it poor reviews.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was published in September 2007. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...
characterized Díaz's writing in the novel as:
a sort of streetwise brand of Spanglish that even the most monolingual reader can easily inhale: lots of flash words and razzle-dazzle talk, lots of body language on the sentences, lots of David Foster WallaceDíaz said about the protoganist of the novel, “Oscar was a composite of all the nerds that I grew up with who didn’t have that special reservoir of masculine privilege. Oscar was who I would have been if it had not been for my father or my brother or my own willingness to fight or my own inability to fit into any category easily." He also has said that he sees a meaningful and fitting connection between the science fiction and/or epic literary genres and the multi-faceted immigrant experience.David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
-esque footnotes and asides. And he conjures with seemingly effortless aplomb the two worlds his characters inhabit: the Dominican RepublicDominican RepublicThe Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
, the ghost-haunted motherland that shapes their nightmares and their dreams; and America (a.k.a. New Jersey), the land of freedom and hope and not-so-shiny possibilities that they’ve fled to as part of the great Dominican diasporaDiasporaA diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
.
Writing for Time, critic Lev Grossman said that Díaz's novel was "so astoundingly great that in a fall crowded with heavyweights--Richard Russo
Richard Russo
Richard Russo is an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher.-Early life and education:Russo was born in Johnstown, New York, and raised in nearby Gloversville...
, Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
--Díaz is a good bet to run away with the field. You could call The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao... the saga of an immigrant family, but that wouldn't really be fair. It's an immigrant-family saga for people who don't read immigrant-family sagas."
In addition to the Pulitzer, The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao was awarded the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize
John Turner Sargent
John Turner Sargent, Sr. was president and CEO of the Doubleday and Company publishing house from 1963 to 1978, taking over from the previous president, Douglas Black....
, the National Book Critics Circle Award
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
for Best Novel of 2007 the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards are United States literary awards dedicated to honoring written works that make important contributions to the understanding of racism and the appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture...
, the 2008 Dayton Literary Peace Price for Fiction, the 2008 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award
Hurston-Wright Legacy Award
The Hurston-Wright Legacy Award is a literary award given by the National Community of Black Writers.The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award is the first national award given to black American writers. The award namesakes are two of the most influential black authors, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard...
, and the Massachusetts Book Awards
Massachusetts Center for the Book
The Massachusetts Center for the Book is the Commonwealth's affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.-National and state Centers for the Book:...
Fiction Award in 2007. Díaz also won the James Beard Foundation
James Beard Foundation Award
The James Beard Foundation Awards were established in 1990 and are often called "The Oscars of Food." Held on the first weekend in May, the Awards honor the finest chefs, restaurants, wine professionals, journalists, cookbook authors, restaurant designers, and other food professionals in the...
's MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his article "He'll Take El Alto", which appeared in Gourmet
Gourmet (magazine)
Gourmet magazine was a monthly publication of Condé Nast and the first U.S. magazine devoted to food and wine. Founded by Earle R. MacAusland and first published in 1941, Gourmet also covered "good living" on a wider scale....
, September 2007. The novel was also selected by Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
and New York Magazine as the best novel of 2007. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is the major city-wide newspaper in St. Louis, Missouri. Although written to serve Greater St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch is one of the largest newspapers in the Midwestern United States, and is available and read as far west as Kansas City, Missouri, as far south as...
, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, Village Voice, Christian Science Monitor, New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
were among the 35 publications that placed the novel on their 'Best of 2007' lists. The novel was the subject of a panel at the 2008 Modern Language Association
Modern Language Association
The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...
conference in San Francisco.
In February, 2010, Diaz's contributions towards encouraging fellow writers were recognized when he was awarded the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, alongside Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
and poet M.L. Liebler
M.L. Liebler
M.L. Liebler is the author of several books of poetry including the 2001 finalist for The Paterson Poetry Prize and winner of The 2001 Wayne State University Board of Governors' Award for Written In Rain: New & Selected and The Moon A Box , which received The 2005 Paterson Poetry Award...
. Also in February 2010, Diaz contributed a highly negative critical assessment of the presidency of Barack Obama to The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
. writing in his essay "One Year: Storyteller-in-Chief":
All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. A coherent, accessible, compelling story—one that is narrow enough to be held in our minds and hearts and that nevertheless is roomy enough for us, the audience, to weave our own predilections, dreams, fears, experiences into its fabric. It should necessarily be a story eight years in duration, a story that no matter what our personal politics are will excite us enough to go out and reëlect the teller just so we can be there for the story’s end. But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. I heard him talk healthcare to death but while he was elaborating ideas his opponents were telling stories. Sure they were bad ones, full of distortions and outright lies, but at least they were talking to the American people in the correct idiom: that of narrative. The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. Ideas are wonderful things, but unless they’re couched in a good story they can do nothing.
Activism and advocacy
Díaz has been active in a number of community organizations in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, from Pro-Libertad, to the Dominican Workers' Party (Partido de los Trabajadores Dominicanos), and the Unión de Jóvenes Dominicanos (lit. "Dominican Youth Union"). He has been critical of immigration policy in the United States
Immigration to the United States
Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants,...
. With fellow author Edwidge Danticat, Díaz published an op-ed piece in The New York Times condemning the illegal deportation of Haitians and Haitian Dominicans by the Dominican government.
On May 22, 2010, it was announced that Diaz had been selected to sit on the 20-member Pulitzer Prize board of jurors. Diaz described his appointment, and the fact that he is the first Latino to be appointed to the panel, as an "extraordinary honor".
Novels
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a best-selling novel written by Dominican author Junot Díaz. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey where Díaz was raised and deals explicitly with his ancestral homeland's experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo...
. New York: Riverhead, 2007. ISBN 9781594489587
Short stories
- "Ysrael" (StoryStory (magazine)Story was a magazine founded in 1931 by journalist-editor Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. Showcasing short stories by new authors, 67 copies of the debut issue were mimeographed in Vienna, and two years later, Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley...
, Autumn 1995) - "How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)How to Date a Brown Girl is a satirical short story by Junot Díaz. The story takes the guise of an instructional manual, purporting to offer advice as to how to act or behave depending upon the ethnicity and social class of the reader’s date.-Plot Summary:Diaz’s dating guide for the Dominican...
" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, December 25, 1995) - "Drown" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, January 29, 1996) - "Fiesta 1980" (Story (magazine)|Story, Winter 1996)
- "The Sun, The Moon, The Stars" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, February 2, 1998) - "Invierno" (Glimmer TrainGlimmer TrainGlimmer Train is an American literary journal founded in 1990 in Portland, Oregon. It is published quarterly.-Past contributors:* Brad Barkley* Charles Baxter* Ron Carlson* Greg Downs* Peter Selgin* Andre Dubus III* Aaron Gwyn* Noy Holland...
), 1998 - "Otravida, Otravez" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, June 21, 1999) - "Flaca" (Story, Autumn 1999)
- "Nilda" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, October 4, 1999) - "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, December 25, 2000) - "Wildwood" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, June 11&18, 2007) - "Alma" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, December 24, 2007) - "The Pura Principle" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, March 22, 2010) - "The Money" (The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, June 13, 2011)
Essays
- "Homecoming, with Turtle" (The New Yorker, June 14, 2004)
- "He'll Take El Alto" (GourmetGourmet (magazine)Gourmet magazine was a monthly publication of Condé Nast and the first U.S. magazine devoted to food and wine. Founded by Earle R. MacAusland and first published in 1941, Gourmet also covered "good living" on a wider scale....
, September, 2007) - "Summer Love, Overheated" (GQ, August, 2008)
- "One Year: Storyteller-in-Chief" (The New Yorker, February, 2010)
- "Apocalypse. What Disasters Reveal" (Boston Review, May/June, 2011)