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"You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist? And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it."

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- Junot Diaz (via Tatiana Richards)

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January 07, 2013

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November 04, 2012

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"1) Not reading enough. 2) Being far more obsessed with approval than with what the work is demanding. 3) Way too much awareness of this as a profession rather than as an artistic calling. My students already know about agents. That’s kind of insane! 4) This is self-serving, but I certainly don’t think that most people who write and publish are taking long enough. 5) Not writing as a reader. Most of the young writers I know seem to be writing for other writers."

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Junot Diaz on mistakes fiction writers make

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/the-scene/events/Junot-Diaz-Talks-about-His-New-Book-Heartbreak-Poetry-and-The-Craft-of-Writing-169354486.html

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September 25, 2012

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'The Baseline Is, You Suck': Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women

The Atlantic: It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a writer—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.