The first sustained critical examination of the work of Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz, this interdisciplinary collection considers how Díaz's writing illuminates the world of Latino cultural expression and trans-American and diasporic literary history. Interested in conceptualizing Díaz's decolonial imagination and his radically re-envisioned world, the contributors show how his aesthetic and activist practice reflect a significant shift in American letters toward a hemispheric and planetary culture. They examine the intersections of race, Afro-Latinidad, gender, sexuality, disability, poverty, and power in Díaz's work. Essays in the volume explore issues of narration, language, and humor in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the racialized constructions of gender and sexuality in Drown and This Is How You Lose Her, and the role of the zombie in the short story "Monstro." Collectively, they situate Díaz’s writing in relation to American and Latin American literary practices and reveal the author’s activist investments. The volume concludes with Paula Moya's interview with Díaz.
Contributors: Glenda R. Carpio, Arlene Dávila, Lyn Di Iorio, Junot Díaz, Monica Hanna, Jennifer Harford Vargas, Ylce Irizarry, Claudia Milian, Julie Avril Minich, Paula M. L. Moya, Sarah Quesada, José David Saldívar, Ramón Saldívar, Silvio Torres-Saillant, Deborah R. Vargas
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction. Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imagination: From Island to Empire
- Part I. Activist Aesthetics
- 1. Against the “Discursive Latino”: On the Politics and Praxis of Junot Díaz’s Latinidad
- 2. The Decolonizer’s Guide to Disability
- 3. Laughing through a Broken Mouth in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- 4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cannibalist: Reading Yunior (Writing) in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- Part II. Mapping Literary Geographies
- 5. Artistry, Ancestry, and Americanness in the Works of Junot Díaz
- 6. This Is How You Lose It: Navigating Dominicanidad in Junot Díaz’s Drown
- 7. Latino/a Deracination and the New Latin American Novel
- 8. Dictating a Zafa: The Power of Narrative Form as Ruin-Reading
- Part III. Doing Race in Spanglish
- 9. Dismantling the Master’s House: The Decolonial Literary Imaginations of Audre Lorde and Junot Díaz
- 10. Now Check It: Junot Díaz’s Wondrous Spanglish
- 11. A Planetary Warning?: The Multilayered Caribbean Zombie in “Monstro
- Part IV. Desiring Decolonization
- 12. Junot Díaz’s Search for Decolonial Aesthetics and Love
- 13. Sucia Love: Losing, Lying, and Leaving in Junot Díaz’s This Is How You Lose Her
- 14. “Chiste Apocalyptus”: Prospero in the Caribbean and the Art of Power
- 15. The Search for Decolonial Love: A Conversation between Junot Díaz and Paula M. L. Moya
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
- A
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