Junot Diaz says children’s books lack diversity
Twenty years ago, novelist Junot Díaz promised his goddaughters he would write a children’s book for them. Their request: to see people like themselves — Dominican girls living in the Bronx — in its pages.
The girls are no longer girls but their book is finally here. Díaz, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” just published “Islandborn.” As promised, it is a picture book that features Dominican girls living in the Bronx. The story centers on a young girl named Lola who sets out to collect memories of the Dominican Republic she left as a baby.
Like Lola, Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic; he immigrated to the United States when he was 6. The book, Díaz said from his home in Cambridge, Mass., “started with an observation — that the narrative of innocence that hangs over a lot of children’s books was insufficient to address the kind of childhood that I had, and also the people in my life. There is this very adult idea that children have to be protected or that the uglier parts of life can’t be brought into children’s books.”
Diaz hopes “Islandborn” will help correct that. The book captures both the joy and hardships of life in an urban, mostly immigrant community.
“Every kid in Lola’s school was from somewhere else,” the book begins. The children’s teacher asks each of her students to draw a picture of their “first country.” Lola is at first panicked because she remembers nothing of her birthplace. But she eventually realizes that she can draw on the many memories of the family and friends who come from her birth country, and she ends up with so much material that she creates an entire book of pictures.
Some of the memories depicted in Lola’s book are jubilant, as her neighbors, family and friends recall the sound of music and the brilliant colors of their island homeland. Other memories are much darker, however, because of the “Monster” who invaded the Island and ruled it for 30 years before “heroes rose up” and banished it forever. Though unnamed, it’s clearly a reference to dictator Rafael Trujillo, whose reign of terror traumatized Dominicans.
Mitigating the book’s serious message are the bright and sunny illustrations by Colombian-born artist Leo Espinosa.
While “Islandborn” (also available in a Spanish edition called “Lola”) clearly will resonate with immigrant readers, Díaz said that’s not the only audience for the book. “The best stories provide us with opportunities for recognition and estrangement — to be spoken to most directly, or to feel that we are eavesdropping.”