Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love
In Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love, José David Saldívar offers a critical examination of one of the leading American writers of his generation. He explores Díaz’s imaginative work and the diasporic and immigrant world he inhabits, showing how his influences converged in his fiction and how his writing—especially his Pulitzer Prize--winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—radically changed the course of US Latinx literature and created a new way of viewing the decolonial world. Saldívar examines several aspects of Díaz’s career, from his vexed relationship to the literary aesthetics of Whiteness that dominated his MFA experience and his critiques of the colonialities of power, race, and gender in culture and societies of the Dominican Republic, United States, and the Américas to his use of the science-fiction imaginary to explore the capitalist zombification of our planet. Throughout, Saldívar shows how Díaz’s works exemplify the literary currents of the early twenty-first century.
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Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love
In Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love, José David Saldívar offers a critical examination of one of the leading American writers of his generation. He explores Díaz’s imaginative work and the diasporic and immigrant world he inhabits, showing how his influences converged in his fiction and how his writing—especially his Pulitzer Prize--winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—radically changed the course of US Latinx literature and created a new way of viewing the decolonial world. Saldívar examines several aspects of Díaz’s career, from his vexed relationship to the literary aesthetics of Whiteness that dominated his MFA experience and his critiques of the colonialities of power, race, and gender in culture and societies of the Dominican Republic, United States, and the Américas to his use of the science-fiction imaginary to explore the capitalist zombification of our planet. Throughout, Saldívar shows how Díaz’s works exemplify the literary currents of the early twenty-first century.
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Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love

Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love

by José David Saldívar
Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love
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Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love

Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love

by José David Saldívar

Overview

In Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love, José David Saldívar offers a critical examination of one of the leading American writers of his generation. He explores Díaz’s imaginative work and the diasporic and immigrant world he inhabits, showing how his influences converged in his fiction and how his writing—especially his Pulitzer Prize--winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—radically changed the course of US Latinx literature and created a new way of viewing the decolonial world. Saldívar examines several aspects of Díaz’s career, from his vexed relationship to the literary aesthetics of Whiteness that dominated his MFA experience and his critiques of the colonialities of power, race, and gender in culture and societies of the Dominican Republic, United States, and the Américas to his use of the science-fiction imaginary to explore the capitalist zombification of our planet. Throughout, Saldívar shows how Díaz’s works exemplify the literary currents of the early twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781478023333
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication date: 08/29/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
File size: 10 MB

About the Author

José David Saldívar is Leon Sloss Jr. Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is the author or coeditor of many books, including Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imagination and Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico, both also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

Preface  xi
Acknowledgments  xix
Introduction  1
1. “Wrestling with J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings”: How Junot Díaz Thinks About Coloniality, Power, and the Speculative Genres  27
Part I. Junot Díaz’s MFA Program Era at Cornell University and Beyond
2. Díaz’s Planet MFA: “Negocios”  47
3. Díaz’s Planet POC (People of Color): Drown  73
Part II. Understanding Imaginary Transference and the Colonial Difference
4. Becoming Oscar “Oscar Wao”  99
Part III. A Legacy In-formation
5. Junot Díaz’s Search for Decolonial Love  151
Conclusion and Coda: “Monstro” and Islandborn  179
Notes  191
Bibliography  225
Index  239

What People are Saying About This

Glenda Carpio

“Wise, and wide ranging, José David Saldívar allows us to explore the contradictions and gifts of a major writer with grace and candor. He places Díaz’s life and fiction against the ‘historical traumas passed like cursed heirlooms among our aggrieved communities’ and shows us ‘the everpressing need for decolonial love.’ And, as always, Saldívar remains attuned to the immigrant and diasporic sensibilities of our Americas.”

Their Dogs Came with Them - Helena María Viramontes

“In Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love, critic José David Saldívar argues with stunning acuity why Díaz’s oeuvre is essential in understanding how colonial histories are palimpsestic in nature, inescapable and violent, intimate and communal. Díaz’s fiction may represent one artist’s fierce intelligence and profound storytelling talents, but it is Saldívar whose richly textured analysis and readings prove that great fiction shines a light on devastating distortions of truth.”

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Related Subjects

Literature
Social Sciences
Literary Criticism
Latinos & Latin Americans
American Literature
Latinos
Latino Literature - Literary Criticism
Literature
Social Sciences
Literary Criticism
Latinos & Latin Americans
American Literature
Latinos
Latino Literature - Literary Criticism

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