Junot Diaz

I've always loved This American Life, the radio program on NPR. I was listening to it once, about five years ago, and as part of the program they had someone read a short story by an author called Junot Diaz. The story was called "How To Date A Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, Or Halfie)". I listened to it and I was knocked out by a couple of things - the rhythm of the language, the natural, colloquial quality of it, and how the author didn't try to sugarcoat anything about the story. It was absolutely a riveting story. When the host gave the author's name and the book that the short story had come from, I wrote it down, even though I was driving at the time. I went out and bought the book the next day.

Man, this book is a winner. Its just the greatest thing ever. I recommend that everyone read it. Try not to like it. Go on, try.

I've been waiting for many years now to hear about another book from Junot Diaz. It hasn't happened yet. I keep re-reading his first book and hoping and hoping. The other day, I looked at his Wikipedia entry and saw that his first novel is supposed to be published later this year. That's a book that I'll devour like a hot doughnut.

Incidentally, JD just had another short story published in the New Yorker, which is - big surprise here - fantastic. It has this line in it, something like "it was like a fight between an egg and a rock - you knew who was going to win." Is that a great image or what?