American - Writer | December 31, 1968 -
In minority communities there's a sensitivity, often a knee-jerk reaction, to critical representations. There's a misunderstanding of what an artist does.
Junot Diaz
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Books don't live and die by awards. You don't listen to an Hector Lavoe album because it won some awards.
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I wrote my first sucio story, as I call them, in 1997. This was always my 'cheater's book,' my book about sucios desgraciados. My plan was to write a book about how people deal with love and loss.
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When I think about my own relationships to the women that I really loved, it feels like that love, even after we've broken up and we're no longer speaking, that love never goes away. No one told me that.
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I think 90% of my ideas evaporate because I have a terrible memory and because I seem to be committed to not scribble anything down. As soon as I write it down, my mind rejects it.
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I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.
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Long before the idea of multiculturalism, in public people could say almost anything to you and get away with it.
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My African roots made me what I am today. They're the reason I exist at all.
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One of the many characteristics of the new is that, at first, it's very hard to recognize it for what it is. We're lucky if we recognize something as being new when it first appears. Usually I think we don't have that privilege. It's usually after the fact that we suddenly turn around and say, 'Wow, this thing is amazing.'
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I really am a believer that 99.99% of all the stories we need, not only as artists but as human beings, not only as writers but as readers, haven't been written yet. Certainly haven't been published yet.
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A young person, or someone who's writing in a different way - in some ways you could say, eventually someone will find them. Eventually someone will hear them. But it's good a lot of young people persevere. Because sometimes you have to send something out a thousand times before anyone recognizes your value.
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When I became my masked identity I was this incredible little nerd, but in the real world I had to be this tough kid from the neighborhood.
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