Advice for Sluts from a Pulitzer Prize Winning Author

Speaking of literary heroes, I've been spending a lot of time with Junot Diaz lately - okay, with his work more than with him per se, BUT I did get to meet him at the Free Library and awkwardly invite him to The True Story.  (His response: "This . . . is . . . a great flyer."  Fair enough, Junot Diaz.  Fair enough.)

So anyway, I've been wondering a lot about why the hell I identify so much with Diaz's writing, since it's a whole lot of Dominican male immigrant experience, and I'm a whole lot of born-in-the-USA white girl.  Rather than chalk all this up to THE POWER OF THE WRITTEN WORD, I've been re-reading Drown and digging up interviews and reviews and excerpts of This is How You Lose Her until the paperback comes out or my library hold comes in - and here's what I've come up with:

1) Diaz's characters are haunted by past relationships.  The Atlantic and The Harvard Crimson both have great interviews that touch on this idea:

"You can get over a person romantically and never fall out of love with them. As a young person I had no idea that that was possible. I always thought that eventually a relationship would come to end, and your imaginary would find in time surcease. But I think when you really fall in love, there seems to be something permanent that happens to you . . . when I stand and look back at all my relationships, beginning to understand that there are a few of them that never seem to diminish, neither in my mind nor my heart. You just manage them." -Diaz, in The Harvard Crimson

2) They're also grappling with being caught in a system of love that's broken, or that's at least broken for them.  They're playing along with the game or the mythology even though they've seen it fail, and they're trying to figure out living around that.

3) The kind of woman that Diaz's character Yunior is attracted to is incompatible with the kind of relationship he's trying to have.  Which leads to the punchline - this gem Diaz hit me with tonight in response to an audience-member question about why his character Yunior is so interested in strong, smart women:

"There are a lot easier ways to be a slut."

4) Okay, the thing about THE POWER OF THE WRITTEN WORD.  Sometimes a dude just writes so good, you're just like, Yes.  Whatever you're saying, yes.  I feel you.

P.S. If you're not familiar with Diaz, start here.  And then explain to me why he thinks his work only has the "illusion of orality." (Or aurality?)

  The True Story, or Vicious & Multiple & Untrue After All will premiere as part of First Person Arts RAW at the First Person Arts Festival (November 8-17, 2012).