Brave Latinas speak up against misconduct
The allegations of sexual harassment against star author and critical darling Junot Diaz have now generated backlash, making this a good time to look at how the story developed and continues to cause rifts within the Latino community.
Diaz’s confessional essay, “The Legacy of Childhood Trauma,” was published in The New Yorker in mid-April. The Dominican-born author — best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” — revealed that he had been raped by a trusted adult when he was 8.
The stunning revelation drew overwhelmingly empathetic responses praising Diaz’s bravery. But one reaction stood out.
“As a fellow Afro-Dominican, even as someone who has not been the victim of rape, but has survived other types of physical abuse and sexual assault, his narrative was really relatable, raw, honest and compelling,” wrote Briana L. UrenaRavelo, a staff writer for the Black Youth Project. “And yet, as many black women have pointed out, it is hard to hear him dissect and discuss the harm he went on to cause toward the nameless black and brown women he dated on his journey. While dealing with the effects and aftermath of his assault, women were reduced to objects and now are mere footnotes in his journey . ... I would love for more attention, gratitude, credit, agency and space be given to those women who were hurt by those hurt men on their way to healing, especially black women. We deserve it.”
Urena-Ravelo surprised many people by ignoring the designated waiting period for questioning the experience of a man who was practically a canonized saint in Latino literary circles (and, perhaps more impactfully, elite, non-Latino East Coast literary groups).
Less than three weeks later, at a Q&A session at the Sydney Writers Festival, author Zinzi Clemmons confronted Diaz about an incident in which she says he forcibly kissed her.
From there, other women came forward. Diaz issued a statement saying he would “take responsibility for my past” and resigned as chairman of the Pulitzer Prize board. The handwringing began about whether this was a witch hunt or a watershed moment for Latinas to speak out about sexual abuse.
Still, at a time when people are saying all kinds of horrible things about immigrants from Latin American countries — President Trump has called them “rapists” and “murderers” — it was tough to see a much-celebrated Latino author be cut down.
Especially because Diaz had essentially been designated the official Latino by the literati — which was unfair to begin with.
“As members of an underrepresented group, we celebrate the success stories in our communities,” wrote Monica Castillo, a staff writer at The Lily, a women-focused publication from The Washington Post. “They become our folk heroes, the ones in whose footsteps we hope to follow. But that lonely success story is something the dominant culture can use against our people, as well.”
“I am disappointed, yes,” Castillo continued. “I am also hurt for the women who became the victims of a system set up to protect token men over their safety and careers — that rumors of Díaz’s bad behavior were squashed or downplayed, and that his status made him seem impervious to criticism.”
The disappointment has been so great that 26 female academics from a wide range of colleges and universities wrote to the Chronicle of Higher Education to express deep concern that both traditional and social media “have created what amounts to a full-blown media-harassment campaign. They have led to the characterization of the writer as a bizarre person, a sexual predator, a virulent misogynist, an abuser, and an aggressor.”
They make a fair point that the #MeToo movement must be safeguarded while “ensur(ing) it does not become another way for the media, including social media, to create a spectacle out of a single person.”
This will take time to sort through, but the literary establishment and the media can start by elevating a larger, more diverse group of men and women with Latin American roots.
And the rest of us need to do a better job of listening.