Junot D燰z and the Decolonial Imagination

The first sustained critical examination of the work of Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz, this interdisciplinary collection considers how Diaz's writing illuminates the world of Latino cultural expression and trans-American and diasporic literary history. Interested in conceptualizing Diaz's decolonial imagination and his radically re-envisioned world, the contributors show how his aesthetic and activist practice reflect a significant shift in American letters toward a hemispheric and planetary culture. They examine the intersections of race, Afro-Latinidad, gender, sexuality, disability, poverty, and power in Diaz's work. Essays in the volume explore issues of narration, language, and humor inThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the racialized constructions of gender and sexuality inDrown and This Is How You Lose Her, and the role of the zombie in the short story "Monstro." Collectively, they situate Diaz’s writing in relation to American and Latin American literary practices and reveal the author’s activist investments. The volume concludes with Paula Moya's interview with Diaz.

Monica Hanna is Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton.

Jennifer Harford Vargas is Assistant Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College.

Jose David Saldivar is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and the author ofTrans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico, also published by Duke University Press.