The Multiplicity of Fiction in Junot Díaz’s ‘Islandborn’

Before presenting his newest release, “Islandborn,” Junot Díaz thanked the Harvard Book Store for its role in jump-starting his career. “Since I began as a writer, Harvard Books has supported me with great constancy and just enormous energy. It’s been an act of devotion. I certainly would not have a career if it wasn’t for teachers and booksellers.” One Pulitzer-prize winning novel, two short story collections, and one children’s book later, it’s hard to imagine the MIT creative writing professor as anything but the successful champion for Caribbean, Latinx, and immigrant narratives he became ever since his first book, “Drown,” was published in 1996. During the sold-out book signing, Díaz explored how representation, solidarity, and the multiplicity of fiction informed his writing process for “Islandborn,” his first children’s book.

“How many people here are themselves or the children of immigrants?” Díaz asked at the beginning of his talk. Countless hands shot up and the crowd cheered. “If every time the word ‘immigrant’ was mentioned we would all cheer, we would be able to change some of the affective regimes that surround that word,” he said. “So many of us have been trained in that default anti-immigrant racism that the very word makes us cringe and get defensive and apologetic.” Díaz presented “Islandborn” as the opposite—a proud portrayal of immigrants and their children’s attempts to combat the erasure of their origins. Lola, the book’s heroine, is one such child. Compelled by a school assignment, she tries to compile memories from other immigrants about the Island she emigrated from and no longer remembers. Her story mirrors that of many immigrants who left their homes in search of better opportunities for themselves and their family.

Sophia Contreras, a Watertown resident and journalism major at Central Connecticut State University, appreciated Díaz’s contribution to children’s literature. “We don’t have enough children’s books written about [minorities], and it’s important for kids to see somebody who looks just like them on a book so they can aspire to be that person. I think it’s good that [Díaz] writes adult books because these kids can read ‘Islandborn’ and then when they’re older, read another book [of his] that they can also be inspired by.”

Díaz also recounted the difficulty of writing a children’s book as a 50-year-old adult. “It’s easy to write a children’s book when you are young,” he said. “The older you get, the less magic you have, I think.” His perspective nevertheless resonated with his goddaughters. “I knew that I at least had reached my core audience because she finished the book and put her head down and wept, and wept,” he said. Because she knows what it means. Her family endured a lot of nonsense because of the dictatorship and post-dictatorship.”

Though the book has Dominican overtones, Díaz purposefully gave the Island its ambiguous name so that readers of different backgrounds could relate. “What makes fiction powerful is its ability to multiply depending on the readers; its multiplicity; the way that it holds different readings inside of itself,” he said. “On one hand, you can read this story and see it directly as a Dominican parable, a parable about Dominican dictatorship. Except that the story itself contains other readings, equally legitimate and in contradiction.”

Díaz explained that he wanted to reframe the narrative to highlight society’s forgotten and silenced heroes. Mr. Mir, the superintendent who works in Lola’s building, is one of the central heroes in “Islandborn.” For Díaz, his struggle reflects the imposed silence of the heroes whose stories remain untold. “You would have someone like Mr. Mir who was a hero who fought against the dictatorship, who fought against the Monster, but people would just spit on [him] that he was just a super[intendent]. And so many people in our lives are like this,” he said, referring to immigrants who never gain the social capital they would need to have their stories told, and in their own words.

Díaz’s insistence on giving voice to the voiceless extended to reality as well. As he opened up the discussion to audience members, he let women of African descent and children—people whose voices have systematically been silenced—ask questions before anyone else. One “young person” asked about the Monster’s—the book’s main antagonist—weakness. “The monster seems to be particularly afraid of people sticking together, you know?” Diaz said. “The way your family sticks together, the way your siblings stick together, the way your cousins, the way we’re all supposed to stick together. Old people have a word for that: We call it solidarity.”

For Díaz, the importance of telling Lola’s story is twofold. “Good art produces fantastic disagreement. By creating uncertainty and disagreement, it has a truth effect. I write the lie that tells the truth,” he said. “In 2016, 94% of all children’s books were written by white people,” he said, a statistic he pulled from a study he read. “The last time this country as a country, as an actual polity, had 94% white people was in 1680. Which means that we are living in a 2018 reality but our literary culture is inflicting us with 1680 level whiteness. This is a crime.” He concluded, “global whiteness is the greatest, most damaging criminal narcotic in circulation.”

Mercedes M. Soto, a Cambridge resident, agreed. “The importance of children of color—specifically girls of color—being able to see themselves as protagonists and being able to see themselves as actors, it gives them a different validity in terms of their experience, and that they exist, and that they’re not invisibilized… I loved what [Díaz] had to say about the fact that there’s such a paucity of writers of color writing for children of color. It’s something we have to change.”

For Díaz and other people of color, the stakes are high. But they need not be unwinnable. “We either shift this paradigm or there is no future for us,” Díaz said. “And that’s the bottom line… With the little power that I have, I’m going to throw my couple of plátanos in.”

—Staff writer Mila Gauvin II can be reached at mila.gauvin@thecrimson.com.