Five years after winning a Pulitzer Prize, Dominican American author Junot Díaz launches a collection of love stories, Así Es Como La Pierdes (This Is How You Lose Her) published by Vintage Español. Díaz is back in familiar territory, revisiting the lives of characters that have become staples of his writing, like the philandering Yunior. From New York City, where he lives, Díaz discusses with Tintafresca his latest book.
By Juan Carlos Pérez-Duthie, www.tintafresca.us
Was this book going to be a novel that you turned into short stories?
I don’t get that lucky where I discover, or I’m not that flexible, where halfway through I can suddenly change. This book began in the same way it ended, as a collection of connected stories.
You are known to spend a long time working on your writing. Was it any easier now with this book?
Uff, I mean, this one was a tough book. It took about 16 years to finish. Yeah, I’m very slow. But even I outdid myself in this one. I was writing Oscar Wao at the same time, but this book required a certain kind of honesty. Sometimes you gotta grow up to write a book. There’s a part of me, I can’t describe it or give it a name, but really a part of me needed to grow up, and it took a long while for that to happen.