May. 4th, 2018 09:59 pm
junot diaz
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toastykittenI remembered that I stopped reading him after This Is How You Lose Her, and part of it was this Elle review by Virginia Vitzhum. I followed him on Facebook for a while, and stopped following him after he kept posting stuff that seemed aimed to bolster his "wokeness", for lack of a better term.
Díaz says it's important to map a mind like Yunior's because "it's astonishing how little we understand male subjectivity." At which point my jaw discreetly drops: Is he calling this stuff under reported?! Yes, Díaz's voice is fresh, as is the Dominican/New Jersey working-class nerd-turned-academic perspective. But I've been reading about women through a lens of leering contempt forever. That men reduce women to body parts and to their sexual withholding/putting-out/performance is not a revelation. Recording that reductiveness without comment, exploration, or illumination does not a successful "feminist-aligned project" make.
Knowing what I know now, about how people manipulate and abuse, and flatter, and dismiss - it's kind of illuminating to take all that in again. I'm not sure what to do with Diaz and Alexie's books on my shelves right now. I love their writing - it is so good, but it's poison.
Díaz says it's important to map a mind like Yunior's because "it's astonishing how little we understand male subjectivity." At which point my jaw discreetly drops: Is he calling this stuff under reported?! Yes, Díaz's voice is fresh, as is the Dominican/New Jersey working-class nerd-turned-academic perspective. But I've been reading about women through a lens of leering contempt forever. That men reduce women to body parts and to their sexual withholding/putting-out/performance is not a revelation. Recording that reductiveness without comment, exploration, or illumination does not a successful "feminist-aligned project" make.
Knowing what I know now, about how people manipulate and abuse, and flatter, and dismiss - it's kind of illuminating to take all that in again. I'm not sure what to do with Diaz and Alexie's books on my shelves right now. I love their writing - it is so good, but it's poison.
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