Junot Diaz is no stranger to politics. Since the Dominican-born, internationally acclaimed writer moved to New Jersey in 1974 at age six, he has endured economic and racial hardships.
He has long incorporated personal experience into his characters. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” told a similar story of a young boy’s struggle to navigate masculinity through a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Paterson, New Jersey. The book received critical acclaim and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It also won the author other numerous prestigious awards including: a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Genius Grant award, the National Book Critic’s Circle Award, Hurston-Wright Legacy award and the Massachusetts Book Awards – just to name a few.
Lately, Diaz has more visibly criticized the United States’ immigration policies. He believes America’s road to citizenship should be easier for its immigrants. He is active in organizations like Pro-Libertad, the Dominican Workers’ Party and the Unión de Jóvenes Dominicanos (Dominican Youth Union). He was also the first Latino ever appointed to the 20-member Pulitzer Prize board of jurors.
In a follow-up with the *Free Press’* May 2013 article, “Chasing the DREAM,” about undocumented college students, in which he was featured, Diaz discussed his personal experiences with racism, economic struggle and his hopes for immigration reform.
Is your Dominican heritage an advantage or disadvantage when trying to find success in the mainstream writing world?
It’s hard to separate the strands of writing from the entire weave of my life. I found that when I was coming up, there was an enormous amount of racism. Was it worse than in the 1950s? I’m sure it was not. Was it better than what a lot other people go through? I’m sure it was. I remember, in my schooling, facing a perversely level of oppression and low expectations.
I’ll never forget a teacher I once had. When we were reading “Brave New World,” she said that society is divided between alphas and betas and gammas. She turned to me and said, ‘You would be a gamma.’ I asked why; I came right back at them. The teacher realized she’d been caught, so she said “Oh, it’s because you have glasses.” So I pointed to this white kid who was an alpha and was like, “He’s got glasses, too”. That was sort of the default of our lives. Of course there was other stuff that was not as personally directed as well.
How would you characterize your childhood?
Damn this shit was tough. Yet we were so unaware of how tough our childhoods were. It was a very weird place to be.
Were there a lot of undocumented kids?
It was certainly split. There were a lot of kids amongst us that were undocumented. But there were some Puerto Rican kids who were, of course, considered American and never had to worry about bullshit like having papers.
Do you foresee a future in which undocumented students have widespread access to higher education in America?
I think that we’re moving towards it. This new generation has shown remarkable leadership. They have helped transform the debate. I’m hopeful. Yet at the same time, I recognize the challenges that face us.
In “One Year: Storyteller-in-Chief,” an essay you wrote for The New Yorker in 2010, you opine, “Obama is yet to ‘flex his narrative muscles.’ Now that we’re at three years since that essay and four years since Obama took the White House, do you still feel that way?
I certainly think his administrative narrative feels incredibly weak. We were so fortunate that the opposition during the last election was so openly, opportunistically, diabolically exploitative. Just the avarice and the cynicism was so patent that again, Obama, just his organization, his discipline, his planning, his sort of strategic genius allowed him to carry the field candidly. Besides liking the man and having the general sense that he is the ‘more liberal’ candidate, most folks don’t have any idea what his story is. Besides being a black president, what is the narrative?
What advice do you have for the President?
Have a story. Has this been a justice-oriented administration? An administration about inequality? Has this been a pacifist administration? Has this been an administration about young people? You tell me what kind of story you would pick if you were president. I guess I would pick one.
As a successful Latino writer in a mostly Euro-centric writing community, do you ever feel isolated?
I was the first kid of color in my New Jersey high school’s honors program. When I was in high school, I already knew what it meant to be selected out by an arbitrary criteria. Being identified or being selected out has less to do with me and more about the way this country likes to crown individuals but oppress communities. In my mind, I don’t know if I’m any more isolated in this society just because some people read my book, other than the fact that it’s very isolating to be a person of color in a country that tends to marginalize them.
What is your advice to young, colored or immigrant people entering the American workforce?
Form a healthy collective. If you are going to get through any of this, you need to figure out a way to make collectives part of your identity. If your identity is totally defined by this idea of the individual, you will suffer a lot more pain. And cultivate a sense of compassion for yourself. It’s harder to get something in this country if you are crueler to yourself.
The New School prides itself on its liberal, racially/culturally accepting intellectuals. But even in this environment, one encounters racism and sexism all too quickly.
Engaging in a rigorous way is one approach. Interrogate the kind of fucked up thinking that underpins the snarky, fucked up irony that must be kicked at hard in order to turn it into dust.
Whether people claim to be liberal or whether they claim to be super-right-winged, they share a lot in common when it comes to hating poor people. I’m never surprised to encounter it everywhere.