- [Narrator] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part
by Hillco Partners,

a Texas government
affairs consultancy

and by Claire and Carl Stuart.

- I'm Evan Smith.
His debut novel,

The Brief Wonderous
Life of Oscar Wilde

was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

His two collections of
short stories, Drowned,

and, This is How You Lose Her
are each critically acclaimed.

His latest book for children
this time is Island Born.

He's Juno Diaz.
This is Overheard.

Let's be honest.

Is this about the
ability to learn

or is this about the experience

of not having been
taught properly?

How have you avoided
what has befallen

other nations in Africa?

You can say that
he made his own bed

but you caused him
to sleep in it.

You saw a problem and
overtime you took it on.

Let's start with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.

Are you gonna run for President?

I think I just got an F
from from you actually.

This is Overheard.

Juno Diaz welcome.

- Thank you so much.
- Very nice to be with you

Congratulations on the book.

- Thank you.

- But before we talk about it,

I want to make a confession,

that I thought to myself

when I was getting ready
to sit down with you,

I need to go and read

all the Junot Diaz
books I haven't read.

- That'll be quick.
(audience laughter)

- I read Oscar Wilde,

and I read the collection
of short stories,

surely Drown was
published in the mid-90s.

Well, I know that
you're not exactly

George Carol Oates,
publishing a book

every five minutes,
but at the same time

I thought, well 23 years
is a long time, 22 years

there must be more books, no.

- Yeah, I take it easy.
(audience laughter)

- I mean, this is not a
criticism, it's an observation.

- I don't mind criticism.

- No, it's an observation,
I mean, you are writing

on a pace that is really
atypical for successful

and acclaimed authors,
people tend to produce more

and I just wonder if
this is a deliberate

strategy on your part
to wait until you have

a book to write,
resisting the pressure

to write more, or do
you struggle, do you

wish you would be
publishing more if you

could only figure
out a way to do it.

- Unfortunately, it's both.

It takes me a long time
to get a book that really

is gonna speak to the
deepest part of me.

In a way, like I have to--

Books have to not
become friends,

they don't even have
to become lovers,

a book has to become my
family in a weird way

before I can get
to it, and it takes

a long time to make a
family, as everyone knows

And then at the
other side of it,

I always wish I could do more,

I always wish I was writing
more, but ultimately

it seems like whatever
part of me is creative

needs a lot more
than most folks.

It takes me a long time
to get to this stuff.

- And also, your
books are so personal,

and they're personal
in a way that even

when you say that
about most authors,

well this book is really
vaguely about you,

but your books are
really personal.

The themes in these books
are really connected to you

the characters are connected
to you, or are you, right?

- Yeah, I mean they're
not very autobiographical,

as will soon be revealed,
but they're very personal.

- But they seem autobiographical

in the sense of
details, you know,

New Jersey shows up
in these books a lot.

The Dominican Republic shows
up in these books a lot,

the immigrant experience
shows up in these books a lot.

the fact is the
narrator of Oscar Wilde,

Yunior de Las Casas,

who comes through a
number of your books.

I mean, that is
effectively your alter ego

for the purposes of
these books, right?

- I would just kind of parse
personal and autobiographical.

There's a lot of stuff that
is deeply important to us

and isn't necessarily
a photocopy.

I tend to give my characters
my syllabus and my clothes,

or my resume and my clothes.

But just because someone
is rocking your resume

and they're rocking your
outfit, they're not you.

It's interesting because I've--

There's stuff about my life

that's so not like
my characters.

I chip parts of myself
to make these characters,

but there's still...

And I'm not just saying that
to be cute or to be coy.

I, for example, grew up with two

absolutely out of
control, amazing sisters

that are a huge part of my life.

And I've never
written about them

because they've asked me
never to write about them.

And without my sisters,
I don't make any sense.

No one can understand
me without my sisters.

- So if you're not
showing us that

then you're really
not showing us you,

as far as these books go.

So we shouldn't take
any random sister

in one of these short stories

that is in a collection or
published in a magazine,

or Lola in Oscar
Wilde, Oscar's sister.

We shouldn't take that to be

this is a stand
in for my sister.

It's a simple minded
view of the world.

- No, no.

I just say the day you meet
my sisters in literature,

you will know.

I promise you. There
will be no doubt.

- So let's talk
about these books.

So first of all, a children's
book. An interesting decision.

Why?

- I'll do a couple of reasons.

I wish I could say that
they're strategic reasons.

They're not.

One of them, of course,
is the tremendous need.

I've been kind of a
published writer now for,

you know, it's been
25 years, 26 years.

Sorry, 22 years.

And one of the thing
that happens is

all the time people come
up to you and they say,

"Hey, listen. I've got a family.

"I ain't reading your
books to my family.

"Can you write some
kid's books for me?"

People keep saying that
and eventually you realize

there's a tremendous need.

Also, I'm one of those people

who never had kids of their own,

and so I'm surrounded
by all my friends' kids,

all my godchildren.

I have six godchildren.

When your friends foist
off their kids on you,

I'm always happy, but when
they find out you're a writer

they're like, "Oh, you
write? Write me a book."

(laughter)
"Make it snappy."

- So this is like on demand?
Is that how this goes?

- Yeah, on demand with me
works on a paleolithic level.

- But still. But still.

You could write
anything at this point.

You're successful enough,
you're well known enough.

I bet the world demands
stuff of you at all levels.

It's a little bit like that
all cats have four legs,

but all things with
four legs are not cats.

All children's book
authors are authors,

but not all authors are
children's book authors.

Not every author is situated
to write a children's book.

They don't have it in them.
They wouldn't know how to do it.

They wouldn't have
the touch for it.

But you apparently do.

I mean, I can say,
having read this book,

this feels absolutely
like a book

if I had small children
now-- used to--

I would be all over this book.

- I appreciate it.
It took a while.

And again, when you
have the arbiters

that are little children,

they will let you
know what's whack.

- They're the toughest
critics, right?

- Yeah, they puke on me.
(laughter)

- I would describe puking
on you as a bad review.

- Yeah, it was terrible.

- It would be a terrible review.

The main character
of this book is Lola.

She's Afro-Latin.
She's in school.

Her teacher says to her class--
It's a class of immigrants.

I mean, one of the things
I love about this is

it begins with this idea
of a class of immigrants

is normal, it's America.

Everybody is from some place.

And the assignment
given to this class is,

it's draw a picture
of where you're from.

Only Lola's problem is she came
from the Dominican Republic.

- From the island.
- From the island.

And she knows where she's from,

but she has no memories of it.

And she then begins, over
the course of this book,

to talk to members of her
family, other people she knows,

who, like her, are
from the island,

and says, "Help me
understand what it was like."

And she gets these images
from these conversations

that become the
basis for her work.

It's a pretty straightforward
idea. Kids can understand it.

They'll see themselves in it.

But it's really
about so much more.

- Yeah.

I mean, the one thing all of
us remember about being young

is that we all have
to confront the fact

that we can't remember
our origins, period.

We hear stories about our
childhood, we see pictures.

It's very uncanny, because
we see pictures of ourself

but we have no
member of being one,

or six months, or anything.

When you're an immigrant,

that what we call
universal experience

becomes deeply charged.

It becomes very, very charged.

The question of origins takes on

an entirely different valence.

You know, we all are curious
about where we come from.

- This is a very, very deep
book. This is not Hop on Pop.

This is a very, very deep book,

wrapped inside a book
that is for children.

And it says something
about the larger world

in which we live in.

- Well, yeah.

The history of how the west
deals with immigration,

and imagines its immigrants,

is a very problematic
and troubled history.

And this is something that
has bedeviled the west--

not only the west-- and
continues to bedevil people.

In the United States, of course,

it's taken on the most
malign turn that we've seen

at least in the 50 years
that I've been alive.

These days the
concept of immigration

has been so weaponized,

and has been sort of conscripted

by very strong white supremacist
elements in this country

as being the wedge issue.

And therefore the right,
or even to recognize

that fact that most people
are descended from immigrants.

If you're not fully indigenous,

if you're not a person
fully of African descent

who was brought here
because of slavery,

chances are you're an immigrant,

you're descended
from immigrants.

And so this should not be
this kind of weird, alien,

hyper-charged, contested thing,

but there's politics
in this country,

very malign and
dangerous politics

that have made what is
the most normal part

of what we call the
American experience

deeply, deeply threatening.

- You use the phrase "strong
white supremacist streak."

I wouldn't like it if it were
only strong white supremacists

who were appropriating
this argument.

The problem in my mind, Junot,

is that it's not just
strong white supremacists,

that this has actually
been normalized.

It's by non-strong
non-white supremacists.

- But I would argue white
supremacy is normalized.

When I say white supremacists
I don't mean people in hoods.

- You don't mean just the guy

with torches in Charlottesville.

I mean that this is
something, a side of politics,

that we've all internalized.

You cannot be
alive in this world

without your
political construction

including strands
of white supremacy.

You don't need white people

for white supremacy
to be alive and well.

You can be in a country
with no white people

and white supremacy
is alive and well,

in very different permutations.

And I do think that
this is part of

what we haven't been able to do

because we haven't been
able to confront it.

The way that Germany
had to de-Nazify itself,

an actual movement, a process,

the United States
has never addressed

how dedicated it is

to some of the logics
of white supremacy.

And one day we will have
to have that reckoning.

We all have to purge
it from ourselves.

- Well the population
trends in this country,

we happen to sit in
the state of Texas

in which population
trends are heading faster

in the direction that the
country's population trends are.

I mean, really, it's
both an explanation

and also a warning about this,

because it is just that
very trend in population

that is causing people
to demonize or weaponize

the notion of otherness.

I mean, in some ways,

immigration is more of a
policy or political construct,

but what this really is about is

you look different from me,

you have a different
perspective from me,

you come from a
different place to me,

and that's been turned
into this big bludgeon.

- Yeah, or for a lot of it,

think about a lot of the people

who are being demonized
and stigmatized

have been in this country

since this country
was this country.

And it has almost nothing to do,

despite what
everyone argues with,

it has almost nothing really
to do with immigration.

It has to do straight
up with racial animus.

And that's really what it is.

That's the ruse, the excuse,
that it's immigration,

but it's just the
praxis of racial animus.

- This is not a
public safety issue

as much as it may be
made out to be one.

This is not an economics
issue. We know what this is.

So all of your books,

Drowned, which we
said, is '95, '96,

Oscar Wilde, which is 2007,

and This is How You
Lose Her, which is 2012.

All of those books deal with
this narrative through line

of the immigrant experience,

of the changing face of
America, all of that,

and characters grappling
with all of that.

This has pretty much been
a consistent bit of you.

- Sure, and characters
dealing with what it means

to be of African descent.

That's very accurate.

And I also have kind
of a sideline on

people in crazy relationships.

- Well I was about to say,

you are not the
author I would turn to

to feel good about any
romantic relationship.

- Though I would argue,

and allow me to
defend those of us

who have been in
dysfunctional relationships.

I would argue that
no one should ever

turn to literature
for self help.

- Well that's stipulated.
I don't disagree with that.

- Literature, in
fact, I would argue

reading about what
it means to be human,

about how bad we
are at intimacy,

in fact is a good way to...

- [Evan] Is it pallative?
It's cleansing?

- I would argue it's a good way.

It gives us a space to think
about ourselves and intimacy.

Most of the time
we're just asked

to buy into the
fairy tale romance.

Literature is like,
"Mm. Me cracked."

- "Let me tell you
how this really is."

- You're like, "Come on in."

20 years later you're
like, "You ruined my life."

- Can I go back to
ask you about this

idea of Yunior, the narrator
of the Oscar Wilde book,

but who has been
really a feature

in many of the things
you have written.

In fact goes back,
as I understand,

the story goes back
to your application

to the MFA program
at Cornell, right?

- Yes. I was writing about
him even before that.

- But you go back even before
you were a published author

in the sense that we know
you to be a published author.

Why go that route?

- Yeah, that's a
really good question.

Despite what it might seem,

it's not as if I
can't make stuff up.

I could have had five or
six different alter egos.

What I decided was what
really interested me

was this observation
I had very early on

about how many
masks we all wear.

I was this kid who was
this immigrant kid,

Dominican, kid of
African descent.

- You got to New Jersey.

You came to this
country to Patterson.

- Nope. Right outside
of Perth Amboy.

- Outside of Perth
Amboy, New Jersey.

Oscar is in Patterson, right?
Oscar Wilde was in Patterson.

There's one of the ways in which
this diverges a little bit.

- Yeah, P-Town, man. It's
another world up there.

- How old were you
got to New Jersey?

- Six.

What became very clear to me
was that I had all these faces,

and so few people knew them all.

I was in a neighborhood,

and that neighborhood
was real particular.

I grew up in an
African-American neighborhood

with a lot of working
class folks of color,

and that was real
particular then.

I got bussed into, with
everybody in the neighborhood,

into a predominantly white
school, but on top of that

I was tested into the
gifted and talented program.

So I'm in the gifted and
talented program thinking,

"None of these people have
ever been in my neighborhood."

I'm in my neighborhood thinking,

"IF you all could see
gifted and talented,

"you'd be laughing
at me all day."

- You get it coming
and going. That's it.

- Then I started working.

Typical working poor,
working class jobs.

Worked in a steel mill.
Worked delivering pool tables.

I'm in college classes
being a super nerd,

delivering pool tables.

- At Rutgers.

- And you just have
all these faces,

and you have all
these people you are.

And I thought, "You know what?

"I can write about one person,

"and this cat has so many
faces and so many sides

"that this person could
fill four, five, six books."

And that's what I thought, I
thought, "Let me try this."

- Well, it's
amazingly effective.

It's not novel in the
sense that others have...

- (mumbling)

- Well, no, no. The
point is that it's not--

This construct is one that
others have used in the past,

but it's particularly effective,
and the fact that it's--

Again, we may mistake it
to be a stand-in for you.

It nonetheless puts
us in the mind of you.

- Well it's
important for fiction

to have what Foucault
called truth effects.

I write the lie that
tells the truth.

There's no accident that books

live inside of your
nervous system.

The only other thing
that lives inside of your

nervous system as powerfully
as art is the real world.

And so it's real
easy for us to think

that something that's
art is actually true,

because the same mechanism we're
using to interpret the real

we're using to
interpret our books.

- Let me come back
to this for a second

and then I want to go
to MIT, where you teach.

I want to talk about what
you see in the context of--

- My youth.

- Teaching the next generation.

A children's book, in the
sense of a literal book,

like ink on paper,
is very old school.

The kids who are coming up today

have a very different
set of habits

in terms of the
content they consume,

the platforms that they are on.

Do you worry that
a book like this,

at the end of the day,

is not targeting the
audience that exists?

- I worry all the time
about literary culture.

- People still read
the New Yorker.

Many of the short
stories we know

under the banners of
your two collections

appear in print before
they were collected.

But those guys are
the exception, right?

- We live in a society where

if you haven't had a
lifelong training in reading,

it is almost
impossible to resist

the enticements of this
accelerated society.

I mean, I don't
blame young people

who can only watch
videos on YouTube,

who never learned to
be able to carve out

two hours of space every
day to do some reading.

How can they?

We've unleashed corporations
with endless funds

on their imaginaries unchecked.

How in the world is a child

gonna be able to compete
against Google, against Apple,

against all of these
massive corporations

that take away all their time?

The very fact that young
people read as much as they do

shows you how robust and
healthy literary culture are.

- So you're
optimistic about this.

- It's not that I'm optimistic.

It's that I want to
recognize something

that in another world
just like this one,

we're not doing as
well as we're doing.

We're always in kind
of the doom mode

because we don't recognize that

despite the trillions of dollars

that are directed at people
like me, and you, and younger,

to tell you not to read,
people are still reading.

And that's heroic. We should
have lost a long time ago.

- So you actually think
that the next generation

will ultimately stay with
us as far as this goes.

- It's not up for me to say.

I just want to recognize
the fact that this form,

for all of its clunkiness
and its old worldness

has got a lot of champions,
and that's a good thing.

- So go from the age of the kid

who might be reading this book,

to the age of the kid you teach,

you teach creative writing
or fiction writing at MIT.

These are students
of a certain age

who have made the
decision, they've opt--

I mean, it is you. Who
wouldn't take your class?

- Actually, most of them
don't know anything about me.

- Seriously?
- Yeah.

- Well, I did think to
myself, "It is MIT."

- It's not just that.

My students-- Look,
let me get it straight.

I teach at a select college.

Some of you may have young
people at select college.

This is the one percent of
the planet educationally.

Just like the rest of
every young person,

all they have on
them is pressure.

If you really think these kids

have all this spare
time to be snowflakes,

you're a crazy conservative.

These people,
these young people,

are under enormous
amounts of pressure.

They're looking for classes
that fit their darn schedule.

- It's as simple as that.

You don't think
they're thinking,

"I've got to take that
Junot Diaz class."

- Hey, some of them might.

I don't want to
be universalizing.

But I'm trying to tell you,

my students, even
at a place like MIT,

there's a struggle for survival.

We've not made universities
to be what they should be.

They're under enormous
amount of pressure.

So I'll get my young
people, and they come in.

And some of them
might know who I am.

Most of them are
like, "Get teaching,"

and it's time to get busy.

- How do you find them,
generally speaking, as students?

Are they open-minded, are
they creative thinkers,

are they out of the box people,

are they pretty conventional?

What's your read as a
rule about these students.

- They have done
their utmost best

not to let this
country poison them.

That's my take on them.

Listen, ain't
nobody in the world

love a place like an immigrant.

Despite what you've heard.

At the same way, nobody loves
a religion like a convert.

Nobody loves their
place like an immigrant.

But these kids, to be a young
person in this country now,

is nigh impossible.

I don't have the
strength and the heart,

if somebody woke me up and
I was suddenly 12 again.

- Can you say a few
words about why that is?

I think we know instinctively,
but why do you say that?

- Because young people
are basically weaned,

they're raised every single day

to think that the only
things that matter

are competition, accumulation,
and creating hierarchies.

And they are told
that no matter what,

the future will be darker,

and less promising than
it was for your parents,

and if you make one mistake

you will fall off
the economic ladder

and you will never return.

This is a society
that teaches them

that there are no safety nets,

that the rich can eat
everything all day long,

and everyone else is
morally repugnant,

and should therefore be scorned.

And it's deeply scary, dystopian
world that they live in.

- Do you think, Junot,
that the message

is out of sync with the reality,

or is the problem
that the message

is entirely in sync
with the reality?

- Well, we've certainly
got a lot of politicians

trying to make this dystopian
message a permanent reality.

But we live in a
very hard country.

It's the richest
country on the planet,

and it is on some
Hunger Games things.

And I think young people
know. They ain't stupid.

They look around
and they're like,

"Wow. This country
will stamp me out."

And they're worried.
And they're worried.

I come in, I'm an artist,

and you try to open
up other windows,

and try to remind them

there's other futures
that are possible.

- The theory of teaching
students, or anybody, to write,

is make them read people

who they admire or
who they'll like,

and the more you read,
the better you'll become

at thinking about how you
want to express yourself.

- The conservatory model.

- That's generally your theory.

- Well, no, it's the
conservatory model.

We have been teaching
music forever

in the conservatory
model, centuries.

You're a musician, you
want to be a musician.

You come in, we
expose you to music.

You practice. Repeat.

If you've got excellent
abilities and you're real lucky,

you can become a musician.

The rest of us have a
good time for a few years

and then move on
to other things.

- You're good with that
model, generally speaking.

- Well, it's been a
highly successful model.

- So who would you teach?

If you're trying to
give young people

a perspective on the best
contemporary writing--

Or maybe not contemporary.

Maybe it's that they have to
go back to the old masters.

Who do you say, "I think
this is absolutely canon,

"canonical work?"

- It's the approach
always with art.

As we know, art doesn't
purport to be religion.

Our Bibles, and
Qurans, and the Talmud

all claim to be for everyone.

But books are different.
Art is different.

Art is real particular.

I tend to have the
scattershot approach,

the shotgun approach.

I throw a ton of
stuff at my students

because you never know
what's going to stick

with any individual student.

- And so the answer
may be individualized

based on the student.

- I'll just throw 12...

Let's say in a week
I'll give them access

to a dozen options, and
be like, "Hey, listen.

"Roam around. See if
you find anything."

What you're doing
is, it's matchmaking,

and anyone who has ever
tried to match make

knows you've gotta throw
the numbers up, man.

- It's pretty hard.

- No, throw the numbers
up. It might work.

- Swiping left at Shakespeare,
whatever it ends up being.

- No. If it's for
Shakespeare, swipe.

(laughter)

- What's the last
good book you read?

- Man, I've read a lot
of really good books,

but one of the great
books I've read recently

is non-fiction.

Sarah Lewis, The Rise, which
is a book about failure.

It's an incredible
book. She is fantastic.

- A theory of this
book, very quickly,

we're almost out
of time, is what?

What's the theory of this book?

- It's about how we
run away from failure,

but the only way to excellence,

and the only way to a good
life, is through failure.

- The cliche is true.

You learn more by failing
than you do by succeeding.

- Yes.

- And that we'd all to
better to fail more.

It would prepare to
do better going for.

- As every relationship reveals.

(laughter)

- Are you gonna write
another novel ever?

- I'm trying.

If I can live a
couple more years,

maybe I'll get it done.

- Let me say on behalf of
everybody watching this,

please stay alive.

Junot Diaz, good to
be with you, man.

Thanks so much.

(applause)

- [Narrator] We'd love to have
you join us at the studio.

Visit our website at
klru.org/overheard

to find invitations
to interviews,

Q&As with our
audience and guests,

and archive of past episodes.

- A society is defined by what
it doesn't want to look at.

And art, in general, is obsessed

with what society
doesn't want to look at.

And so it's no accident
that we will consume

the juicy, sweet parts of an art

while ignoring the
knotty, difficult truths.

- [Narrator] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part
by Hillco Partners,

a Texas government
affairs consultancy,

and by Claire and Carl Stuart.