Pulitzer for Diaz.

AuthorContreras, Jaime Perales
Position!Ojo! - Junot Diaz

LAST YEAR, Dominican-American author Junot Diaz was given the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In it, Diaz tells the tragic story of a family forced into exile by dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic for more than 30 years. For his iron-fisted and corrupt rule, Trujillo has been the object of repudiation by many, but he has also been the inspiration for several novels, including La fiesta del chivo by Mario Vargas Llosa and In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.

Diaz's novel, written in 2007, could have been subtitled "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dominican Man," since it appears to emulate the James Joyce work in some way. But this is not a traditional formative-years novel narrated by a young man. It is much more than that. In fact, if the reader isn't alert, it can be kind of a trompe l'oiel, or optical illusion.

Diaz establishes an interesting technique that brings together different genres of North American pop culture: the comic book, science fiction film, and 1960s television programs. It's a clever way to sensitize Hispanic-American readers in the United States about the complicated series of tragedies that the Dominican Republic has had to face over the years. In some ways, Juno Diaz's pop culture technique is reminiscent of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Manuel Puig, two writers who were able to make names for themselves in North American culture long before...

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