Junot Diaz about Books, Love, Matriarchal Revolution, New York

(http://www.accidentalamerican.us/blog/junot_diaz_on_becoming_american.php)
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New York is home in ways few places are, says Junot Diaz, who lives part-time in Harlem and part-time in Cambridge. He adds, I feel like I have Jersey and the Dominican Republic, and they come together in New York City because New York has about a million Dominican immigrants. When I want to get midway to Santo Domingo, I’m in upper Manhattan

Junot Diaz gave recently an interview for The Harvard Crimson. Here are brief excerpts I took from there:

I find reading more important to me than almost anything, including my writing. I consider myself a reader way more than I consider myself a writer.

The most favorite line of the chapter in the book he was reading just before the interview: it is unlikely that anyone will ever again enter New Zealand carrying a red deer. Wow! I love this. Fucking great, isn't it?

A line that has really struck the interviewer in Junot Diaz story The Cheater’s Guide to Love: The half-life of love is forever.

And the author develops the idea, as a young person I had no idea that was possible. I always thought that eventually a relationship would come to end, and your imaginary would find in time surcease. But I think when you really fall in love, there seems to be something permanent that happens to you. But it certainly feels that way when I stand and look back at all my relationships, beginning to understand that there are a few of them that never seem to diminish, neither in my mind nor my heart. You just manage them.

His new collection This is How You Lose Her is about the rise and fall of a Dominican male slut. How did the boy learn to be a male slut, or at least this particular boy? How he is formed, and how that formation undoes him in the end. Because one must reflect that many of the messages we labored under were piercingly contradictory.

Will it be a matriarchal revolution?

Well, I mean, what the fuck are we around for if there’s no hope for that? Do you want to see this shit go on for another fucking 40,000 years? Look at this fucking nonsense. I mean, honestly. My shit isn’t that somehow women are transhuman, that their essence is morally, ethically superior. My thing is, okay motherfuckers, we’ve been at this game now 40,000-plus years depending on how you rank Homo sapiens civilization. I think it’s time for a time out. For real. Dudes could use a 10,000-year time out, minimum.

Read the whole interview at:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/9/13/15-Q-junot-diaz/

(Junot Diaz)

(New York, New York)