“It’s important to remember that you and the work are now, right here — and there is, in fact, no promise of a future. Dealing in the now as opposed to some possible future where you have to defend the work on practical or economic grounds becomes another way to dodge what matters most — the work now. Futurity is weaponized against one’s own talents, against the only thing that makes the talent worth speaking of — what is before you now and not in some projected Muad’dib future.” WritingArtWorkFuturePresentFuturity Author:Junot Díaz
“You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.” WritingMonsters Author:Junot Díaz
“After his initial homecoming week, after he'd been taken to a bunch of sights by his cousins, after he'd gotten somewhat used to the scorching weather and the surprise of waking up to the roosters and being called Huascar by everybody (that was his Dominican name, something else he'd forgotten), after he refused to succumb to that whisper that all long-term immigrants carry inside themselves, the whisper that says You do not belong, after he'd gone to about fifty clubs and because he couldn't dance salsa, merengue, or bachata had sat and drunk Presidentes while Lola and his cousins burned holes in the floor, after he'd explained to people a hundred times that he'd been separated from his sister at birth, after he spent a couple of quiet mornings on his own, writing, after he'd given out all his taxi money to beggars and had to call his cousin Pedro Pablo to pick him up, after he'd watched shirtless shoeless seven-year-olds fighting each other for the scraps he'd left on his plate at an outdoor cafe, after his mother took them all to dinner in the Zona Colonial and the waiters kept looking at their party askance (Watch out, Mom, Lola said, they probably think you're Haitian - La unica haitiana aqui eres tu, mi amor, she retorted), after a skeletal vieja grabbed both his hands and begged him for a penny, after his sister had said, You think that's bad, you should see the bateys, after he'd spent a day in Bani (the camp where La Inca had been raised) and he'd taken a dump in a latrine and wiped his ass with a corn cob - now that's entertainment, he wrote in his journal - after he'd gotten somewhat used to the surreal whirligig that was life in La Capital - the guaguas, the cops, the mind-boggling poverty, the Dunkin' Donuts, the beggars, the Haitians selling roasted peanuts at the intersections, the mind-boggling poverty, the asshole tourists hogging up all the beaches, the Xica de Silva novelas where homegirl got naked every five seconds that Lola and his female cousins were cracked on, the afternoon walks on the Conde, the mind-boggling poverty, the snarl of streets and rusting zinc shacks that were the barrios populares, the masses of niggers he waded through every day who ran him over if he stood still, the skinny watchmen standing in front of stores with their brokedown shotguns, the music, the raunchy jokes heard on the streets, the mind-boggling poverty, being piledrived into the corner of a concho by the combined weight of four other customers, the music, the new tunnels driving down into the bauxite earth [...]” WritingLongPovertyThird WorldGood WritingWell WrittenDeveloping CountriesDeveloping NationsBrilliant ProseLong SentenceLong Long Sentence Book:The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“When someone tells me they don’t like my books — always a strange way to open a conversation but hey such is life — I first think: How is that my problem? I just wrote the damn thing. And second: welcome to the club. Books, by nature, disappoint. 99.9999* of the planet will never read, much less like, anything you’ve written. The surprise for me is not that someone didn’t like or read my work but that someone in this messed up Chthulucene planet did. Books are the triumph of humble collectives, offerings to the god of small things.” WritingBooksDisappointmentLikesWritersDislikes Author:Junot Díaz