I have about 1001 thoughts about the news on Junot Díaz today. First, @zinziclemmons and @carmenmmachado, thank you for your courage, I believe you, I am sorry that it happened, I am with you.
2nd: it wouldn't all have gone down this way if the publishing establishment weren't obsessed w/ a) picking 1 token from each marginalized community for all the praise & kudos, & b) mixing patriarchy not only into its racism but also into its supposed efforts to address it.
Latinx writers and readers have long looked up to Junot Díaz. His work is powerful and he's stood for the possibility of our voices & narratives existing in the literary world. He has given many young Latinx writers hope and even direct support, including me. I've been grateful.
But at what cost to women? At what cost to women of color? And at what cost to the very notion of multiplicity of voices within Latinx communities? Who decided Junot Díaz was the cultural authority on all things Latino, for everyone, including Latina women?
The white-led literary establishment enshrined him as the premiere voice of all things literary and Latino. They sure as hell weren't going to give that kind of cultural authority to a Latina woman (let alone a queer Latina woman). Tokenism functions that way: one voice on top.
Tokenism flattens our narratives, silences voices. This moment may be painful to many of us in the Latina/o literary community, a shattering of what blazed space for us. But we can be larger than any pigeonhole. Always were.
A shattering makes room for the new. Let this moment break open space for the brilliant Latina voices the literary establishment ignores. Latina & WOC writers: let's stand tall. Stay loud, & true. Put words on the damn page. & get those pages into a world that sorely needs them.
& for everyone: we can all be part of shifting literary culture toward something more open and capacious for all voices, less destructive to women or reductive around race. We can all shape the future of culture. We all shape it, every day.
