Junot Díaz to speak at Brooklyn Public Library
Brooklyn BookBeat
Junot Díaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” and, most recently, the acclaimed collection “This is How You Lose Her,” is modest about his success as a writer. “Most of the time, I thought [writing] was going to be a night job,” he said this past spring when he spoke at BAM’s Eat, Drink & Be Literary series.
Díaz will be returning to Brooklyn this Saturday, Oct. 26, to read from his latest book at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch. “This is How You Lose Her,” which was recently published in paperback, chronicles scenes from the life of Yunior, the ever-complex character who Díaz so expertly developed in his first collection, “Drown,” as well as in “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Like his first two, Díaz’s latest book traces Yunior’s romantic and familial escapades – and often mishaps – as he comes of age and navigates the rocky transition into adulthood.
Díaz brings Yunior to life with such raw, unflinching prose that readers cannot help but feel for him, even in spite of his overtly crude viewpoint and often misguided choices. Díaz has a way of getting inside Yunior’s head to create a remarkably real and multifaceted protagonist; in fact, the author has spoken openly about his own connections to Yunior. “Yunior is an x-ray of who I was before I stopped pretending that I was hard,” he said earlier this year at BAM. “Yunior is a specimen of someone who comes from a very familiar American tradition.”