Known for his colloquial and quippy yet profound tone and his complex characters whose stories and identities span oceans and islands, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz will read his latest book, "This is How You Lose Her," Friday at 5 p.m. in Filene Auditorium.
"This is How You Lose Her," a finalist for the National Book Award, is a collection of linked short stories about a young man's coming of age in the context of his romantic relationships.
Diaz' visit is the keynote event of a month-long celebration of Latino Heritage Month, organized by the Latino Advisory Council, an ad hoc group of students, faculty and administrators, with funding provided by the department of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies and support from the Office of Pluralism and Leadership.
An immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Diaz focuses his writing largely around Dominican immigrants in the U.S. and how they grapple with their home country's strong pull in the midst of their day-to-day problems. After leaving the Dominican Republic, Diaz moved to New Jersey, and he employs both locales heavily in his stories.
"When I was growing up few people were arguing that such marginal spaces could be the springboard of literature, but I always knew that my art, if it had any power, was fueled by the fact that I never grew up in the heart of power, always in the shadows," Diaz said in an email. "One sees better that way, and seeing better is essential for an artist."
His first novel, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2008. Keysi Montas, who advises the Dominican student group Quisqueyanos at Dartmouth, said the organization has been trying to get Diaz to visit campus since its inception in 2007.
"He is an active and representative voice of the immigrant experience," Montas said. "It will be an educational experience for all of us here to be able to have a perspective of what that experience is like, to come to a new country and to learn a new language and integrate into society and to be successful. In essence, whether you are an immigrant if you are born here or born elsewhere, you are not from Mars. You are still a human being."
Montas, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic himself, said he relates to not only Diaz's stories, but to his life. Montas and Diaz lived in the same New York apartment building for some time, and the two remained in contact through email and Facebook. Montas is also a writer, whose work was published in a short story anthology that also featured Diaz, and was contracted to consult on the Spanish translation of "This Is How You Lose Her."
The story collection took 16 years to write.
"I still remembering trying to write the first words when I lived in an unheated apartment in Brooklyn, before Brooklyn became the writer's annex it is now," Diaz said. "I grew up in a hyper-masculine world, surrounding my male misbehavior that was my touch line, the place from where I started."
Lisa Baldez, chair of the LALACS department and a fan of Diaz's work, said the event was an opportunity for collaboration between the department and Latino groups on campus. She said she is curious to see how Diaz connects his work as a writer, community activist and creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From an academic perspective, Baldez said it is important for onlookers to understand the significance of Latin America as a region, especially its contributions to American culture.
"One thing Diaz brings is an awareness that to be Dominican and to be American and to be Dominican-American are not things that have distinct boundaries," Baldez said. "These things are not integrated exactly but they are inseparable. To be of Latino heritage, it's not separable from your family's heritage and the country you came from."
Although Diaz's heritage has become almost synonymous with his work both as an activist and writer, he said he feels no pressure or external responsibility to represent the plight of the Dominican people.
"For me, the Dominican-ness of my characters, of my diegetic world, is an organic given and not some kind of extrinsic obligation," Diaz said. "One should never confuse the labor of the shaping with the fact of the material."
This is the first time that Dartmouth has hosted a collective, institutionalized celebration of Latino heritage.
Diaz aims for his work to kindle in readers an introspection in which they find the human in others and in themselves.
"For those of us who grew up never having our lives reflected back to us, I'm hoping my books give some of these readers a sense that their lives are real, that they exist a simple declaration that most people of color living in the U.S. don't often get," Diaz said.
