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z0ruas · 7 months

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If you’re a boy writer, it’s a simple rule: you’ve gotta get used to the fact that you suck at writing women and that the worst women writer can write a better man than the best male writer can write a good woman. And it’s just the minimum. Because the thing about the sort of heteronormative masculine privilege, whether it’s in Santo Domingo, or the United States, is you grow up your entire life being told that women aren’t human beings, and that women have no independent subjectivity. And because you grow up with this, it’s this huge surprise when you go to college and realize that, “Oh, women aren’t people who does my shit and fucks me.” And I think that this a huge challenge for boys, because they want to pretend they can write girls. Every time I’m teaching boys to write, I read their women to them, and I’m like, “Yo, you think this is good writing?” These motherfuckers attack each other over cliche lines but they won’t attack each other over these toxic representations of women that they have inherited… their sexist shorthand, they think that is observation. They think that their sexist distortions are insight. And if you’re in a writing program and you say to a guy that their characters are sexist, this guy, it’s like you said they fucking love Hitler. They will fight tooth and nail because they want to preserve this really vicious sexism in the art because that is what they have been taught. And I think the first step is to admit that you, because of your privilege, have a very distorted sense of women’s subjectivity. And without an enormous amount of assistance, you’re not even going to get a D. I think with male writers the most that you can hope for is a D with an occasional C thrown in. Where the average women writer, when she writes men, she gets a B right off the bat, because they spent their whole life being taught that men have a subjectivity. In fact, part of the whole feminism revolution was saying, “Me too, motherfuckers.” So women come with it built in because of the society. - Junot Diaz

#writing #feminism #literature #junot diaz

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sinligh · 2 years

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Sometimes it feels like I’m raising a young girl that chooses death inside a woman who have no choice but to bring life.

I see the world through shades that refuse to exist.

The eye of truth is obsessed with death as much as it fears resurrection.

I have faith in the future. I know I have more time to dig up more graves in the graveyard that is my soul for versions of myself that were never allowed to be.

Now, i know myself In the comfort of the walls of my own mind

I know myself, alone.

Sarcastic, a bit cynical some of my pieces have fallen out, Others are hanging like broken teeth. My skin won’t shed completely and my fingers aren’t enough to hold me

Yet, I refuse to ask for help afraid if someone actually reached out

I’ll bite…

Loneliness to someone who’s used to be alone and prefers to be feels a lot like betrayal…

I wish I could stop feeling this lonely all the time, it’s almost like a phantom limb pain. I’m feeling pain in a part of me that no longer exists…

Bleeding rage from an invisible wound.

•••

•Quotes: Halsey/Christa Wolf/ Anne Sexton/ Anne Carson/Louis Tomlinson/ Kaveh Akbar/Junot Diaz/ Janet Fitch/Rosalind M. Baker.

•Original context: sinligh

•Art reference:

1. Art by Liu Yuanshou. 2. Jada Wilson "The Fallen Order". 3. Ray Donley (1950, American). 4. “Emergiendo Ill”DeAngel painting 2008. 5.MIND OVER MATTER by Valerie Patterson.

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rivaana · 2 months

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“What I am trying to cultivate is not blind optimism… but radical hope.” — Junot Diaz

#optimism #junot diaz #hope

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ardent-reflections · 9 months

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I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.

Junot Diaz

#junot diaz #literature #spilled thoughts #poetry #words #poems and quotes #poem #quotes #lit #poems about loneliness #loneliness #sad quotes #sad poem #sad thoughts #sad poetry

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karlnapity · 2 years

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L'Manburg, or the beginning of the day and the home you leave behind

Miriam Adeney // Evelyn Waugh // Yizheng Ke // Junot Diaz// Walter Benjamin // Vincent Van Gogh // Anne Carson // Ocean Vuong

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allloversbetray · 1 year

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From This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

#this is how you lose her #junot diaz #literature #w #*#heartbreak #on endings

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keepcalmandwritefiction · 1 month

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A novel’s bulk is a respite from life’s implacable uncertainty. You and I can end in a heartbeat, without warning, but no novel ends until that last page is turned. There’s something deeply consoling about that contract the novel makes with its reader.

– Junot Díaz

#fiction #fiction writing #novels #novel writing #junot diaz #quotes #kcawf original #writeblr

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reverie-quotes · 8 months

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This is how you treat your mother? she cried. And if I could have I would have broken the entire length of my life across her face, but instead I screamed back, And this is how you treat your daughter?

— Junot Diáz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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dk-thrive · 3 months

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There is a life force coursing through the work, implacably curious, devoted to the small human things, and a recognition that even if we shattered ones don’t always put ourselves back together, there is dignity in our brokenness.

—Junot Díaz, from "A Death-Haunted First Novel Incandescent With Life. In “Martyr!,” the poet Kaveh Akbar turns a grieving young man’s search for meaning into a piercing family saga. (NY Times, January 19, 2024)

#junot diaz #Kaveh Akbar #Martyr!#broken #dignity #human

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sbbarnes · 1 year

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if you are wondering if I am making this up, ask yourself why I would remember the syllabus so well ten years on.

the professor's name was nancy. she was well over seventy and had some trouble walking. she was t e r r i f y i n g. one time, she kicked everyone who hadn't done the reading out of the classroom. one girl was so scared that, even though she hadn't been sussed out as having not done the reading, she confessed and left.

afterwards, nancy grinned at those of us who had done the reading and went, "I like to do that once a semester to keep people on their toes."