Junot Díaz, writer: ‘People like to hate migrants, but the hard part is standing up to power’ 

“Excuse me, are you members of Leiva’s band?” It turns out the famous Spanish rocker is playing that same night in Córdoba and staying at that same hotel. Some people mistake writer Junot Díaz, 56, for a rock star… even though he doesn’t look like one.

The writer who does look like one — and who also wanders the halls — is Mariana Enriquez, with her gray hair and black clothes. The Argentine is another illustrious participant in the Cosmopoética Festival, which ended on October 5.

What the audacious Leiva fan doesn’t know is that he’s standing before a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Díaz, who was born in Santo Domingo, won the award in 2008 for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). “I won it the same way someone wins the lottery!” the author jokes. Although, his hybrid language — that Spanglish, that cheekiness, that humor (which he also displays in person) — surely contributed. “A friend of mine says that the [most widespread] language in the world is ‘badly spoken English.’ But I say, in general, that it’s any badly spoken language,” the writer points out.

So then, what’s his language?

“I don’t know!” he exclaims.

Díaz, lean and explosive, has “really bad” Spanish, as he affirms with Caribbean élan (although, honestly, it’s not that bad). He emigrated to New Jersey from the Dominican Republic at the age of six because his father supported dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo and became a clear target in the civil war that followed the dictatorship. “But while my brothers learned English well, I couldn’t speak a word,” he recalls.

Díaz has never been fluent in languages: although he lives his life in English (he teaches at MIT, writes short stories for The New Yorker and publishes book reviews with The New York Times), after every conversation, he mentally checks whether he has expressed himself correctly. The insecurity never ceases. In Latin American circles, he’s asked to speak better Spanish, while in English-speaking circles, the same thing occurs. “Well, I’ve learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable,” he concludes.

In short, being a writer was never the most obvious path for him. “But I think it’s possible to have talent in something where you don’t have a natural ability,” he clarifies. “I was able to pursue the opportunity in a field where I face many challenges. I write little, I want to avoid it, but it’s something that calls to you: in the end, you have to put yourself out there. Bro, my thing is to write a book every 15 years,” he chuckles.

Díaz hasn’t formally published fiction in a long time. His last work was the children’s book Islandborn (2018) and, before that, the short story collection This Is How You Lose Her (2012). But curiously, he continues to be invited to attend literary events. This past June, he visited the Madrid Book Fair, which was dedicated to New York City, and he just concluded his participation in the Córdoba Cosmopoética Festival, which invited this newspaper to attend.

In Díaz’s opinion, having to talk about what’s new — not having to “sell the book” — allows him to delve into other, more interesting aspects of literature. However, in a few weeks, the writer will submit his next novel to his publisher. He has already published some of the chapters on Substack. “It’s almost done,” he sighs. “It’s like science fiction, fantasy… nerdy, very, very nerdy.” It’s about a young man who discovers his supernatural powers (a classic plot of the genre), but with the twist that he grows up in a poor neighborhood.

“Harry Potter is an orphan, but in his stories, he doesn’t deal much with that question, with what it means to be poor or to be an orphan,” Díaz explains. Posting the text online brought him face-to-face with direct feedback from the public for the very first time, which forced him to correct the narrative’s direction. “There was a character very beloved by readers, who didn’t interest me that much. And my friends told me: ‘Don’t kill him, don’t even think about killing him,’” he recounts, amused. “I learned a lot as a writer [from that experience].”

“Underlying the plot of my new novel is the cruelty of society,” he adds. This cruelty is rampant today. The writer attributes it to, among other things, the emergence of social media: “The limits that a community places on cruelty are important. And now there are no limits, because cell phones push us to be more cruel. No limits.” Thanks to this confrontation generated by social media, the elites — more powerful than ever — can sleep well: “They’re not afraid, they have us so disorganized... I’m not saying it’s some big fucking conspiracy in which they’re like the Wizard of Oz; it’s more indirect than that. But I know they don’t feel threatened.”

The migration that never ends

At the opening session of Cosmopoética, Díaz chatted with Puerto Rican novelist and essayist Mayra Santos-Febres. Interestingly, they met as graduate students at Cornell University, when they were both “super-activists.” They chatted about literature, Caribbean nature and, of course, the migrant condition, which never dissolves, no matter how many years pass. “Never in the history of capitalism have we had this much inequality, never have we had rich people with so much power and so much impunity (is that how you say it?). And these horrible elites make us believe that migrants are the problem? That’s a complete manipulation. But people like to hate migrants; it’s a very easy thing to do. The difficult thing is to confront those in power,” Díaz opines.

Most of Díaz’s friends who have foreign accents go around carrying their passports, “just in case ICE comes after them.” One of his acquaintances — who has “problems with his papers” — has quit his job and never walks down the main streets to go shopping. “He’s afraid they’ll come after him and send him to Sudan: that poor man is going crazy,” the author explains. Others failed to regularize their status; they’ve been living in the United States for 30 years and now they could be sent back to the Dominican Republic. “They’re not prepared for that… they don’t stand a chance.”

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, there’s a very funny description of the dictator Trujillo — a narcissistic and ridiculous figure — who could be compared to today’s strongmen, such as Trump or Putin. “Political buffoonery helps autocrats a lot. Few of these figures come cloaked in shadows: many of them are ridiculous and that helps them [get closer to the public, because] people don’t see them as a threat… that is, until they’re already entrenched in society.”

Does Díaz think we should stop laughing at these political figures? “Yes,” he replies. “As we laugh, they devour us whole, like a monster biting our leg. They’re dangerous. We have to realize that the demonic isn’t always going to be like Sauron or Darth Vader: cruelty doesn’t always have teeth.”

In 2018, Díaz published an essay in The New Yorker in which he recounted being a victim of sexual abuse as a child. The text had an unexpected effect: one author accused him of forcing a kiss on her, while others accused him of making misogynistic comments in public settings.

After the ensuing scandal, investigations were conducted by the Pulitzer Prize Board, MIT and journalist Ben Smith, who exonerated Díaz. Today, he retains his status, despite protests against the aforementioned investigations from other parties.

What remains of all that? “I’m like two people now. One continues with his integrated life: working at MIT, publishing in The New Yorker, with his book reviews in The New York Times. But on the internet, there are still people saying I’m a bad man. We’re [living in] a time when lies travel first class. Without that journalist, I’d be done for.”

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