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Junot Diaz Geeks out Over Comics:
"In addition to being a Pulitzer-winning, chart-topping novelist and
short story writer, Junot Díaz is more than a little nerdy. Okay, very
nerdy. His work — including his latest story collection, This is How You Lose Her
— is filled with references to geek-culture touchstones that blend
seamlessly with historical analysis and intimate struggle. And towering
above all else, his fiction is filled with references to comic books.
But no one had ever interviewed him just about those comics. That’s why
filmmaker Abraham Riesman went for a trip to St. Mark’s Comics in
Manhattan — a longtime haunt for Díaz — to talk comics. To Riesman’s
surprise, Díaz’s comics knowledge was even deeper and broader than he
had expected." Click heading to watch video.
"Junot Diaz" by Edwidge Dnaticat:
"If Marvel Comics had gotten around to it, Oscar Wao would have been a
hero. As it is, Junot Díaz stepped in and made him one first. Oscar is a
Dominican nerd (an oxymoron) who “could write in Elvish, could speak
Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in
acute detail.” A young aspiring writer with wet dreams, Oscar steps out
of the Dominican diaspora in New Jersey with such a singular vision of
romance, such a nonstop hankering for a world where the underdog
actually wins, that we fall in love with him. Oscar, spawned by a writer
with a profound understanding of the mythical implications of science
fiction as well as the history of the Dominican Republic under what Díaz
would call a bad-ass dictator named Trujillo (true story), is heir to a
fakú. That’s a curse."
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz:
"Oscar de León was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always
going on about. He wasn’t no player. Except for one time, he’d never had
much luck with women. He’d been seven then." Click heading to read the rest of the excerpt. Note: Excerpt contains language some may find offensive.
“He was an introvert who trembled with fear every time gym class rolled around. He watched nerd shows like “Doctor Who” and “Blake’s 7,” could tell you the difference between a Veritech fighter and a Zentraedi battle pod.”
ReplyDelete“In this short documentary, the author talks about the growing literary significance of comics, the small-press titles he’s following today, and how his wildly successful work wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t for the comics creators that he grew up reading. “
It is interesting how the author takes some of his own experiences and twists them to make it believable in his character.
What, really, can one say? I’m a slow writer. Which is bad enough but given that I’m in a world where it’s considered abnormal if a writer doesn’t produce a book every year or two—it makes me look even worse. Ultimately the novel wouldn’t have it any other way. This book wanted x number of years out of my life.
This is also a fear I have as well. What if something I am writing is going to take me longer than a year or two? Authors want to make sure that they are proud of what they have written and not just slapped it all together due to time constraints. It also does beg another question though: For a book that has a series, does the sequel have to come out after a year right after the first book or can it wait until the author is satisfied with what he/she wrote?
First off I would like to point out that I absolutely love Junot Diaz’s work. I have read “The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao” and “This is How you lose her” and I plan on reading “Drown” within the next few weeks, so as soon as I saw Junot Diaz’s name I was automatically intrigued by this post. Specifically what I personally love about Junot Diaz’s work is how real it is. Every time I read a book of his I feel as if I am just talking to a friend and they’re just sharing stories of their life and these stories are just amalgamations of life lessons and truly experiences that are so different and yet I feel I can somehow relate to. Additionally, something that Junot Diaz does really well in his work is the use of naming, “They reached the Elizabeth exit, which is what New Jersey is really known for, industrial wastes on both sides of the turnpike”, including words of this nature is exactly something that we have learned to include in our writing through out the course of this class.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, with “The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao” my own view about the novel itself is the very big emphasis on the stereotypes placed upon Dominican men and the sexual objectification of women. I feel that this novel emphasizes that such matters exist because our society has allowed it to. Dominican men, and generally all men are expected to be strong both physically and emotionally and when a man lacks these qualities, he is automatically lacking masculinity because of the norms created by society. Women are constantly objectified because society contributes to the misconceptions of women being viewed as sexual figures through out the media and the world around us.
- Julissa Peralta
First off I would like to point out that I absolutely love Junot Diaz’s work. I have read “The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao” and “This is How you lose her” and I plan on reading “Drown” within the next few weeks, so as soon as I saw Junot Diaz’s name I was automatically intrigued by this post. Specifically what I personally love about Junot Diaz’s work is how real it is. Every time I read a book of his I feel as if I am just talking to a friend and they’re just sharing stories of their life and these stories are just amalgamations of life lessons and truly experiences that are so different and yet I feel I can somehow relate to. Additionally, something that Junot Diaz does really well in his work is the use of naming, “They reached the Elizabeth exit, which is what New Jersey is really known for, industrial wastes on both sides of the turnpike”, including words of this nature is exactly something that we have learned to include in our writing through out the course of this class.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, with “The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao” my own view about the novel itself is the very big emphasis on the stereotypes placed upon Dominican men and the sexual objectification of women. I feel that this novel emphasizes that such matters exist because our society has allowed it to. Dominican men, and generally all men are expected to be strong both physically and emotionally and when a man lacks these qualities, he is automatically lacking masculinity because of the norms created by society. Women are constantly objectified because society contributes to the misconceptions of women being viewed as sexual figures through out the media and the world around us.
- Julissa Peralta
First off I thought it was way cool of him to stay loyal to some of the comic authors that he liked in his youth. His mentioning of Jeff Smith and Matt Kindt, especially the way he had a certain amount of reverence in his voice for Kindt, let me know that he was someone who was really into that world. Being a former yugioh player I’ve spent a lot of my high school weekends in a comic shop call, and I’m not making this up, ‘Boyhood Dreams’. While there I noticed people always jumping back and forth between Marvel and D.C., and then talking trash about the company and writers that they were in the corner of the month before. This alone tells me that Diaz has more depth than most of the so called comics fans I’ve had the displeasure to run into. This is only amplified by how he related to the comic experience as it was similar to mine. The idea or more appropriately the fear of the other did rule a great deal of my childhood. That’s probably why I spent so much time at that comic shop. He then of course takes that powerful message, of learning one’s place in society and includes it in his works giving them greater resonance. Being a fan of his work without being Latino is akin to being a fan of the x-men and not being able to generate optic blasts from your eyes. Somehow it’s still all totally relatable.
ReplyDelete