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October 16, 2007
People. Junot Díaz
People. Junot Díaz: Michiko Kakutani (NYT) described Junot Diaz's debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as "Mario Vargas Llosa meets Star Trek meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West." Díaz deserves the high praise - his work is inventive, funny and original. Wondrous Life, a story told through the eyes of a second-generation Dominican geek, gives Díaz an opportunity to explore the relationship between identity and ethnicity in an assimilative society.
We got hip to Díaz after reading Wildwood, a short story about a Dominican girl in Paterson, New Jersey and her controlling mother. The characters in his stories have an authentic streetwise tone and use English and Spanglish interchangeably. Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in New Jersey. He's the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Rome Fellowship in Literature. If you aren't already a fan, you will be. (Miramax has acquired the screen rights to his book - sweet!)
Purchase a copy of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [Here]
Posted by james at October 16, 2007 01:40 PM