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Lukupiiriläiset saivat esittää kysymyksiään kirjailija Junot Díazille. Ohessa hänen vastauksensa. Muutamaan kysymykseen hän ei vastannut, mutta suurimpaan osaan kyllä. Siis olkaa hyvät!

Q: What or who gave you the idea for the title character of the book, Oscar Wao?

A: I was fascinated my masculinity formation in the New World. Oscar, as a non-traditional masculinity, allowed me to explore and critique mainstream
masculinities in both the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean. Oscar also
presented a challenge to me as a writer. How to make someone like him,
frustrated, stubborn, irrational, desperate and uncool, attractive?

Q: Why did you use so much spanish language in your book? It seems to have irritated some readers.

A: One thing that European readers might not understand is that in terms
of the New World Spanish in place before the arrival of English. In the United States Spanish is English’s silent unacknowledged twins. Whether we’re talking about place names (Los Angeles, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Texas) or it’s literal presence in United States culture there really is no English without
Spanish and no Spanish without English. Not in the Americas there is not.

What fascinates me is that anyone would be irritated by encountering
words that they do not understand in a text. The foundation of reading is that it is impossible for any one reader to understand every word in a text. Books are
always approached collectively, though they might be read individually.
We all learn to read by asking: what does this mean? That simple refrain is
what leads us into reading. But once we become readers many of us abandon that praxis and assume a book must be utterly transparent to us. This is wrong-headed and seems to misunderstand the purpose of reading. Reading is there to drive us to form communities with people who can explain what a word means to us. Strange words in a text are an invitation to reach out to someone else; they are not there to annoy.

Q: One of the readers found it interesting or even unconvincing that the
music Lola and Oscar listened were Siouxie, Banshees, New Order, The Smits or U2. How big within your culture these bands were?

A: Again this sounds like a person who knows very little about the role of
New Wave music in the 80s on community of colors in the American Northeast. I grew up in a poor Dominican community and Siouxie and New Order and the Smiths and U2 were huge. Just because we’re Latino or black didn’t mean we didn’t access to the larger world. I mean, U2 and Siouxie and the Smiths are not Finnish either but that doesn’t stop a Finnish person from enjoying them. Are we US brown people only supposed to play drums and listen to salsa? This is very reductive point of view.

Q: What was the creature that showed himself to both Oscar and his mother?
Was it someone like Aslan? Was it some creature from the DR folklore?

A: Well, that’s one of the questions a reader has to answer for herself. One
here is reminded of Todorov’s THE FANTASTIC. When one encounters a
fantastic element in a text one must decide is this simply a dream or a trick (if
so then the fantastic element gets downgraded to the Uncanny.) But if you think this fantastic element is REAL then it becomes an example of the marvelous. The reader must decide are the mongoose and the no face man simply uncanny elements or marvelous elements? And if they’re marvelous what kind? Science fiction, fantasty, magical realism?

Q: How about the man with no face? Who or what was he?
Does the faceless man have some meaning / role model, where does it stem
from?

Q: Do all men think of sex 24/7?

A: I don’t know all men. But there’s definitely people in your group who are
having affairs and people in your group who think of sex more than the
characters in this book. It’s a story about love and sex so these elements
are going to be foregrounded of course. And these ARE characters who are
wrestling (and/or embracing) the stereotype that people have about
Caribbeans being hypersexual.)

Q: Did you first think of writing a book “DR history for dummies”? (the
footnotes being quite extensive)

A: I’d be very careful about using this book as a Dominican history lesson.
The narrator Yunior makes constant mistakes and isn’t above distortion and
exaggeration to prove a point.

What I was thinking about the history in the footnotes was how wedded
readers are to narratives that are authorative (history is an example of such a
narrative) and yet these same readers who will swallow a lie couched in
history will reject a truth couched in science fiction or fantasy terminology.

Q: Is writing about your roots your thing or could you think of writing about
something entirely different?

A: I don’t know anyone like the de Leon family. They’re entirely invented. I
never met anybody involved in any way in the Truijillo Regime. So this is a
book that is not very autobiographical.

Q: Do people really focus on looks, cars and sex so much in the DR, even
though there is poverty and natural catastrophies?

A: This is not a real question is it? Change the DR for the US and you have
Your answer. Later modern capitalism (a system of which the Finns are particular adept) has deformed people’s imaginaries to the point where they deserve things that they cannot hope to afford. Which is why we have a bank crisis in the US. Late modern capitalism doesn?t care whether its seducing the rich or the poor.

Put another way Dominicans are not any worse consumers than your average
American. It’s just the economic contradictions make this consumerism
appear all the more perverse. But just think what Finnish consumerism would
look like if you lived surrounded by the Third World collectives that your
transnational capital preys on. It would make your spending activities look downright inhuman, no?

Q: What is the role of church in DR today?

A: None what so ever. The Dominican Republic had a very weak Roman Catholic hierarchy and even the new charismatic protestant sects have not had much success in the DR. We seem strangely immune to religious mummery, which is kind of ironic, considering how rich and imaginative our folkloric beliefs are.

Q: The book gave an impression that young DR women only seem to pursue men and, more shockingly, tolerate domestic violence. Do you think this is
changing?

A: This is the wrong impression. We’re looking at one family whose mother was enslaved and systematically raped throughout her childhood. Her traumas and obsessions were passed on to her children through inter-generational transfer. Lola doesn’t pursue men at all. She seeks to escape her mother, her family, her past. Men are just a tool in this process. and remember who is telling the story. Yunior, who is himself a cad and who has a reputation for objectifying women and for being very promiscous. The question is: is the problem the Island or the narrator?

Q: What kind of feedback have you received from Dominicans? Do they find the book authentic and how do they feel about the opportunity to get worldwide publicity for their country?

A: It’s not easy to generalize about collectives. There are many different
sectors of Dominican societies and many different interpretation of the
book. This text is not meant to be the official story about the
Dominican Republic. It tells the story of one damaged immigrant family
and their quest for love. It seems that folks are generally supportive.
But there’s also people that are pissed off that i chose this kind of narrator who wants to describe this kind of world. What is hard for people to understand is that Yunior’s narration is not only a point of view, it is not reality. That’s why we have other books. So that we can get other points of view.

Q: Do you yourself (as your storyteller in the book) feel that nationality
affects character so much? Specifically so that the dominicans and the
haitians are so different.

A: It’s like when i was in Denmark and the things that the Danish said about
The Finns. You guys seem very much alike to me but that’s not the way the Danes saw it. I think we are all shaped in some way by national myths. The
Dominican Republic however has a violently genocidal national myth. Not
surprising considering that the Dominican Republic itself is the site of
countless genocidal traumas.
Q: How much you are a dominican, how much do think about your nationality and roots in your everyday life?

A: This might be hard for a European to understand? In Europe (what I’ve seen) there is much emphasis on assimilation of immigrants without really giving the immigrant a vital role to play in the society. In the US there is much talk about assimilation but communities don’t face the kind of pressure they face in Europe. Many ethnic communities become Americanized while simultaneously maintaining strong ties with their ancestral nation. In Europe this is viewed on with great suspicion in many places I have visited. And I’ve never seen immigrants in Europe as well integrated COLLECTIVELY into the economic and social life of the country, which is something that the US, for all its violence and segregration, does remarkably well. Poor Dominican immigrant children from terrible schools are found in all the Ivy leagues. Not just one or two but 20, 30, 40. American hates its immigrants but we immigrants have made this country ours and I don’t think many immigrants in other countries can say the same.

Being Dominican is very important to me. But so is being a member of
the US. Do i think a lot about it? Not at all. I think of it no more
than you think about being Finnish. It’s only outsiders who think of our nationality as problematic while theirs is a given.

Q: How do you see the situation in the Dominican Republic today?

A: Very complicated. Much political perfidy, much untrammeled capitalism, much poverty, a brutal group of wealthy elites, many European tourists taking
advantage of the country’s weakness, tremendous creative and energy from
young people, a wonderful arts scene.

Q: What is the role of literature in the Dominican Republic?

A: A tiny market. Santo Domingo is not like Colombia or Mexico. 31 years of a
book burning ditcatorship guaranteed that.

Q: What are your main literary influences and why?

A: I read everything. I continue to read everything. I read four, five books
A week. I’ve been deeply moved by traditional writers like Dickens and wild
men like Juan Rulfo, by classics like Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie and
pop nonsense like WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT. how all these things that i have read have influenced is impossible to know.

Q: Does literature have a mission? If so, what is it?

A: I’m not sure if all books have a mission but literature seems to be
Committed to reminded us, to confronting us with our humanity.

Q: What do you think of John McCain’s VP nominee Sarah Palin who’s known for her religious extremism and desire to ban books that have “inappropriate” language in them? Do you think Governor Palin would enjoy reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?

A: This is not the book of their America. It is a book about the real
America, the one that exists, that speaks in many tongues and springs from many races. They wish to live in a conservative racialist dream.

Q: Your novel is magically descriptive. So much so that one of the readers
saw the characters like in a movie, and heard the Caribbean rhythms of the
soundtrack. Do you think that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao could be
made into a movie? If so, who would you like to direct it?

A: The book has already been purchased by Scott Rudin for Miramax Films. The director is slated to be Walter Salles who directed CENTRAL STATION and the MOTORCYLE DIARIES.

Q: You come from a country that is unknown to many and you seem to have the urge to educate us about it. What do you know about Finland? What are your two seconds about Finland?

A: Actually I was less interested in educating people about the Dominican
Republic than I was exploring the Dominican chapter of what I would call American History. But that’s a good question regarding my Finnish two seconds. Here’s what i know about the Finns. Once part of Sweden, after WW2 was in a tough spot with the Soviet Union, sort of neutral, but really the Soviets had their thumb on the scale of Finnish society for a long time, let’s just say that during the Cold War if you were fleeing Russian you did NOT go to Finland, the Finnish would send you right back; welfare, the Sami, and the fact that as a language Finnish does not have many siblings in the world. Oh yeah, low birth rate, great economy and supposedly you guys are inscrutable. Also i hear you don’t date like us Americans. and that when a guy and a girl go out for dinner they split expenses. that somebody in Finland looks like Conan O’Brien. But that’s it. Hopefully when i visit Finland you guys will show
me more?

Q: And finally, because us readers are never satisfied, Why did it take so long before you published your second book? Where you too self-critical, did you have problems with the structure?

A: It was a tough book. I was hard on myself but the book was hard to put
Together and it was hard to be in the characters as deeply as i needed to be.
It took a long time. But hey, the best thing about books is that they’re never late to the party. and that’s the thing about art you can no more schedule it than you can schedule a rainstorm.

Q: We hope to be hearing soon more abot the people in DR! Would you promise not to make us wait another 11 years?

A: Well, I hope you won’t be hearing about Dominicans and Americans since that’s the either wing of this narrative eagle. But I’ll try to make the next one
come sooner.

Thank you for your time.
j

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