Thanks for this Community. I saw you speak at a humanities festival in Charlottesville, VA a few years back and read at the University there from This is How You Lose Her. I’ve watched several videos of your lectures and talks and wonder if you’ve thought of starting a podcast. You’re gifted at conversation and talking through what you’ve got to offer as a writer and reader. Your insights and energy are more than often extraordinary. Reading the quality of what you’re doing on this platform makes me think a podcast would be awesome. Thanks for what you do.
As for a question, what would a syllabus for an American Literature course look like if you were to teach a 10 week intro as an 18 year career desperate English adjunct at a community college, someone who has been teaching at the college’s prison program in Men’s and Women’s prisons in central VA for two years now and wonders what the hell to offer students as we enter the summer of an American election year, especially knowing that every incarcerated person noticeably worries and wonders what the hell has happened to our country.
rob, thank you for your time and your support and your important question. im sure others on here will have better ideas than i will but here goes nada (and please forgive my lapses and imperfections).
american literature is so wildly gigantic a canvas that intro courses invariably are small forks of lightning attempt to illuminate the vastness of the night. and yet we take what light we can, right?
i cannot imagine the demands / restrictions you have but no matter what i would probably focus on a thin quadrant of that vastness. Intro to American Literature: Newcomers (which would allow you to focus on immigrant writing and newly arrived beings like Superman or X-Men mutants). Or Intro to American Literature: Apocalypses (which would allow you to mine the country's singular obsession with the end and you could include the comics MAUS and WATCHMEN, Butler's DAWN (a book that estranges imprisonment / enslavement powerfully and has extraordinary things to say about both) and even a book like Paul Beatty's WHITE BOY SHUFFLE which is organized around a mass suicide.) Or Intro to American Literature: Outsiders (which would allow you to incorporate texts from every minoritized community) and give you a potent lens through which to approach any number of themes and problems).
(I always teach comics / graphic novels in my courses - since they tend to be both approachable and dense in critical materials.)
anyway that's all i got at the moment. hope these brief comments will be helpful in some way. and good luck,
Thanks for these suggestions! Outside of my personally grappling with the subject matter and my own skillset, I should mention that Reginald Betts recently brought his Freedom Reads, https://freedomreads.org/, project to prisons in the area. These are mini library bookshelves with 500 book selections in each that are installed in every housing unit. The project has supercharged folks to read. So far my time invested in the classes I mentioned is the best learning experience I've had.
My substack is (primarily) pedagogic; my fiction is artistic. These modes have overlaps of course but a lot of dissimilarities too. As a stacker I do deploy a persona and am sensitive to questions of audience but both of these are approached in very different ways than in my writing (and to very different ends). When I substack I’m more instrumental – trying to help and teach – when I write fiction I’m in search of more mysterious interactions. In the writing I can imagine a very narrow strategic audience but when I stack my audience coordinates are, by necessity, much broader, more generous.
Methodologically speaking, I spend a lot of time on substack dialoguing, clarifying and explaining, which is something I tend to avoid in my writing. The didactic is certainly part of fiction but in my case only a small part; the didactic, however, is essential to my substack practice.
In both modes (pedagogic and creative writing) my persona functions similarly: it is a strategy for eliding or minimizing me. In the pedagogic mode our focus should be on the material; in fiction our focus should be on the fiction. One tries to bring up the personal only to help elucidate or strengthen a point.
Of course when I stack personal essays or fiction that hews more to the creative mode.
Just finished Victim. It's really good, it's really funny. My favorite scene was when Gio threw Javi's laptop on the floor and smushed it. Suerte, Andrew Boryga.
Thank you, Junot! I honestly don't even have the words to express how cool this is man. A dream come true is a colossal, massive understatement. Your support means the world.
A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Jose David Saldivar’s book of criticism about your work, and there was this quote in a review of Drown that he cited, wherein you said “I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: ‘This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.’”
My question is, how do you avoid falling into that pitfall of turning into a “native informant,” while still incorporating the colloquialisms that contribute to your character Yunior’s voice? More broadly put, how do you think it’s possible that writers of ethnic American characters can accurately portray said characters’ experiences without sounding like they’re throwing in cultural signifiers just for the heck of it? I hope this makes sense!
I’m a senior in undergrad right now completing my capstone project, a short collection of stories, and your craft essays have been very helpful to that end! Thank you.
Junot, would love to see your take on change. I've been advised along the lines of "Characters should show change not only in the beginning vs. the end of a novel, but also within chapters." - Thoughts? Guidance? - Do you HAVE to? How top of mind do you keep this? When you rewrite are you consciously keeping score of that? Thanks.
Damn. I am just catching up here months later. I fell behind. Then I went to Korea. Then I came back. And realized I missed seeing one of your recos while there. Such is life.
I’m working on a piece in third person where characters (including protagonist from whose point of view the story is told) switch in and out of dialects and code-switch.
The following might sound like an odd, but I’m having difficulty knowing what to do with the narrative voice or more specifically being comfortable with the narrative voice being different from the voice used in dialogue.
As the dialects flip in and out in response to situational changes, it seems instinctive that the narrative voice should stay the same to create a tonal cohesion throughout the piece, however when I read the work through I’m not so sure.
So I’m not sure if this just a ‘me’ issue in terms being comfortable with what feels like a disconnect or whether I should be looking more into for example, picking one of the dialects and deciding which of them is the ‘main’ dialect and trying to make the narrative voice more closely align with this.
Hope this is clear but if you’d like any clarification, please let me know.
Your thoughts and any guidance, would be gratefully received.
Hi Junot Diaz,
Thanks for this Community. I saw you speak at a humanities festival in Charlottesville, VA a few years back and read at the University there from This is How You Lose Her. I’ve watched several videos of your lectures and talks and wonder if you’ve thought of starting a podcast. You’re gifted at conversation and talking through what you’ve got to offer as a writer and reader. Your insights and energy are more than often extraordinary. Reading the quality of what you’re doing on this platform makes me think a podcast would be awesome. Thanks for what you do.
As for a question, what would a syllabus for an American Literature course look like if you were to teach a 10 week intro as an 18 year career desperate English adjunct at a community college, someone who has been teaching at the college’s prison program in Men’s and Women’s prisons in central VA for two years now and wonders what the hell to offer students as we enter the summer of an American election year, especially knowing that every incarcerated person noticeably worries and wonders what the hell has happened to our country.
rob, thank you for your time and your support and your important question. im sure others on here will have better ideas than i will but here goes nada (and please forgive my lapses and imperfections).
american literature is so wildly gigantic a canvas that intro courses invariably are small forks of lightning attempt to illuminate the vastness of the night. and yet we take what light we can, right?
i cannot imagine the demands / restrictions you have but no matter what i would probably focus on a thin quadrant of that vastness. Intro to American Literature: Newcomers (which would allow you to focus on immigrant writing and newly arrived beings like Superman or X-Men mutants). Or Intro to American Literature: Apocalypses (which would allow you to mine the country's singular obsession with the end and you could include the comics MAUS and WATCHMEN, Butler's DAWN (a book that estranges imprisonment / enslavement powerfully and has extraordinary things to say about both) and even a book like Paul Beatty's WHITE BOY SHUFFLE which is organized around a mass suicide.) Or Intro to American Literature: Outsiders (which would allow you to incorporate texts from every minoritized community) and give you a potent lens through which to approach any number of themes and problems).
(I always teach comics / graphic novels in my courses - since they tend to be both approachable and dense in critical materials.)
anyway that's all i got at the moment. hope these brief comments will be helpful in some way. and good luck,
Thanks for these suggestions! Outside of my personally grappling with the subject matter and my own skillset, I should mention that Reginald Betts recently brought his Freedom Reads, https://freedomreads.org/, project to prisons in the area. These are mini library bookshelves with 500 book selections in each that are installed in every housing unit. The project has supercharged folks to read. So far my time invested in the classes I mentioned is the best learning experience I've had.
Do you apply the same lessons of persona and audience to these Substack posts?
My substack is (primarily) pedagogic; my fiction is artistic. These modes have overlaps of course but a lot of dissimilarities too. As a stacker I do deploy a persona and am sensitive to questions of audience but both of these are approached in very different ways than in my writing (and to very different ends). When I substack I’m more instrumental – trying to help and teach – when I write fiction I’m in search of more mysterious interactions. In the writing I can imagine a very narrow strategic audience but when I stack my audience coordinates are, by necessity, much broader, more generous.
Methodologically speaking, I spend a lot of time on substack dialoguing, clarifying and explaining, which is something I tend to avoid in my writing. The didactic is certainly part of fiction but in my case only a small part; the didactic, however, is essential to my substack practice.
In both modes (pedagogic and creative writing) my persona functions similarly: it is a strategy for eliding or minimizing me. In the pedagogic mode our focus should be on the material; in fiction our focus should be on the fiction. One tries to bring up the personal only to help elucidate or strengthen a point.
Of course when I stack personal essays or fiction that hews more to the creative mode.
Sorry to be so scattered but hoping this helps.
Victim is already on Kindle so I'm getting ready to download (on Junot's recommendation).
Gonna skip Until August and let Gabo rest in peace.
Just finished Victim. It's really good, it's really funny. My favorite scene was when Gio threw Javi's laptop on the floor and smushed it. Suerte, Andrew Boryga.
Thank you, Junot! I honestly don't even have the words to express how cool this is man. A dream come true is a colossal, massive understatement. Your support means the world.
Hi Mr. Díaz—
A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Jose David Saldivar’s book of criticism about your work, and there was this quote in a review of Drown that he cited, wherein you said “I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: ‘This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.’”
My question is, how do you avoid falling into that pitfall of turning into a “native informant,” while still incorporating the colloquialisms that contribute to your character Yunior’s voice? More broadly put, how do you think it’s possible that writers of ethnic American characters can accurately portray said characters’ experiences without sounding like they’re throwing in cultural signifiers just for the heck of it? I hope this makes sense!
I’m a senior in undergrad right now completing my capstone project, a short collection of stories, and your craft essays have been very helpful to that end! Thank you.
Junot, would love to see your take on change. I've been advised along the lines of "Characters should show change not only in the beginning vs. the end of a novel, but also within chapters." - Thoughts? Guidance? - Do you HAVE to? How top of mind do you keep this? When you rewrite are you consciously keeping score of that? Thanks.
let me see what i can do - please forgive any insufficiencies.
No stress at all. Gracias!
Damn. I am just catching up here months later. I fell behind. Then I went to Korea. Then I came back. And realized I missed seeing one of your recos while there. Such is life.
Dear Professor Diaz
I’m working on a piece in third person where characters (including protagonist from whose point of view the story is told) switch in and out of dialects and code-switch.
The following might sound like an odd, but I’m having difficulty knowing what to do with the narrative voice or more specifically being comfortable with the narrative voice being different from the voice used in dialogue.
As the dialects flip in and out in response to situational changes, it seems instinctive that the narrative voice should stay the same to create a tonal cohesion throughout the piece, however when I read the work through I’m not so sure.
So I’m not sure if this just a ‘me’ issue in terms being comfortable with what feels like a disconnect or whether I should be looking more into for example, picking one of the dialects and deciding which of them is the ‘main’ dialect and trying to make the narrative voice more closely align with this.
Hope this is clear but if you’d like any clarification, please let me know.
Your thoughts and any guidance, would be gratefully received.
Thanks and regards
Sherie