BY APOLLINE BERTY

In print | Published November 20, 2008 — Updated November 23, 2008 17:10

Last Friday, Nov. 14, Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” indulged fiction lovers on campus with a reading from his award-winning book, offering insights into his own writing process and advice for aspiring authors (along with the occasional admission of more personal details like, oh, say, what his fantasy super power might be) in the question and answer period that followed.

After Associate Dean and Director of the Intercultural Center Rafael Zapata introduced Díaz as a longtime friend, the Dominican-American writer read an excerpt from “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” his most acclaimed work.

“Oscar Wao” tells the story of a nerdy, overweight Dominican-American boy growing up in New Jersey. Oscar has passion a for science fiction, fantasy and women and is perpetually preoccupied with the curse of the fukú, which he believes has plagued his family for generations and that dates back to the colonization and slavery of the Caribbean. An admitted bibliophile, Díaz explained that the novel was in part a way for him to show his admiration for books by incorporating references to classic literature into the text. The very title of the novel is, according to Díaz, an allusion to both Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”

The passage of “Oscar Wao” that Díaz chose to narrate related the story of (Oscar’s sister’s) Lola’s discovery of her mother’s breast cancer. Poignant and emotionally powerful, the scene that Díaz chose to share with the audience underscored the terrifying difficulty of trying to come to terms with the knowledge of a parent’s sickness and explored the multi-layered complexities of mother-daughter relationships.

After his reading, Díaz fielded a number of questions that ranged from his literary inspirations to his fantasy super power.

“This was a moment for you all to really shine and you saw it,” Díaz said of the audience’s questions. “The questions that people were asking were fucking deep. People came here to make me work, and I really appreciated that. You don’t come to these things because you don’t want to be helpful. You come because you want to be in conversation with young people.”

“These things are less about celebrating the artist and more about celebrating the community,” he added, expressing his admiration of Swarthmore’s student body.

Díaz also took the time to give budding novelists advice about escaping the autobiographical element in their writing. “You’ve got to disfigure the autobiographical element in the story in a productive way,” he said. “This means that even though I’m talking about my life, I have to imagine every scene that was my life anew,” he continued, illustrating this point by referencing his first work, a collection of short stories entitled “Drown.” When writing one of those short stories, Díaz added a physical disfigurement to the protagonist in the earlier drafts of the text. Though he later removed any mention of this disfigurement in the final edits of the work, adding it into the story during the writing process allowed him to gain the distance he needed from his character.

Arlyss Gease ’10, who was introduced to Díaz’s work last spring in Professor Gregory Frost’s Fiction Workshop, found Díaz’s reading from “Oscar Wao” helpful in understanding how the author communicates his ideas within the structure of the narrative: “I really enjoyed hearing him read the passage because it makes the connection a little bit clearer between what he’s thinking when he writes and what we get from it,” Gease said.

After the event, Díaz stood by the table where his books were being sold as a huge line formed in front of him. Díaz stayed and signed every single copy presented to him, taking the time to talk with each person in line. Later that same day, Díaz gave another talk to the Latino community of Philadelphia at the cultural arts organization Taller Puertorriqueño.

According to Zapata, the IC has been working since last February to bring Díaz to campus with the help of the Cooper Foundation. “All the performances that we bring, we try to mix it up to reflect the diversity of our constituents,” Zapata said, stressing the multiplicity of the IC community.

The Intercultural Center ultimately chose Díaz to speak at Swarthmore, Zapata said, not only because he is an acclaimed writer, but also because his literature raises fundamental questions regarding the relationships between families and the role that immigration plays in those relationships.

“I thought it went extremely well,” Zapata said of the event. “I was very happy with the turnout, it looked like LPAC cinema was the perfrect venue and that just about all the seats were taken, with some people sitting on the floor,” he added. “Together, we were able to put together something that the whole college community could participate in and enjoy.”

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