Invisible Forces

Henry Ace Knight describes Diaz's fiction writing in this way: "His work concerns diaspora, belonging and exclusion, race, masculinity, and privilege..." In their interview, Junot Diáz said:

I, for one, don’t think it’s possible for anyone as an individual to be liberated from the larger forces that overwhelmingly control our lives. Like how does one simply excuse themselves from class, from race, from gender? You can say that you’re excused from them but of course these forces will work on you in spite of the fact that you’re bowing out. I think that what interests me as an artist is the way that these invisible forces press down on our lives. I’m interested in how history has this spooky quantum effect on people. How history, even when we run from it, even when we disavow it, even when we forget it, is like some very strange dark-eyed dog. It always finds its way back to us. Not to say that this is the way the world works, but it’s what brings me to the page.

To read the entire interview, see http://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-junot-diaz/