J u n o t   D í a z

“One cannot fight the sea, you have to go with your love

 and hope one day, things change”

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. His writing offers raw insight into the truths of the Caribbean diaspora, American assimilation, and the lives lived between here and there. His writing includes much of his own experience, portraying challenges and obstacles in an immigrant’s life.

In 1996, he published Drown, which is an anthology of coming-of-age short stories of his narrator’s experiences growing up in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic. He uses literary strategies to shift the narrator’s perspectives and interweaves chronologies dependent on setting. Much of his writing follows this theme of approaching the history of the Dominican Republic in an ironic and humorous way, all the while conveying the truths of its violent history. He tells stories from the vantage points of those who lived through this violence and those who escaped it.

Díaz received his B.A. from Rutgers University in 1992 and went on to gain his M.F.A. from Cornell University in 1995. After being an affiliate professor with Syracuse University, he went on to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing. He is also the fiction editor at Boston Review, a bimonthly magazine that discusses topics ranging from politics to religious though.

Díaz’s work is said to be so powerful because of its complete emotional honesty, which allows for innumerous interpretations for readers. He has been talked about the guy who writes about women and the men who cheat on them, but has also been understood as a writer who effectively defines the desperate struggle for love and connection on a deep, emotional level.