WEBVTT

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The expert.

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It's good to be
good at something.

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Tonight I have the unique
pleasure of introducing you

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to the man whose work in many
ways got me into this game,

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Junot Díaz--

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not that he's to be held
responsible for that.

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And while my work doesn't
emulate his necessarily,

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I did learn from him the
power of writing about where

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you're from and what you know.

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The stories in Drown,
his debut collection,

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are set in the crushing poverty
of the Dominican Republic

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and the failed promise of
Underclassville, USA, tenements

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bordered by burning trash heaps.

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Drown is possessed
of an understated

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fury, a clear-eyed cynicism.

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It's quiet, equal parts
longing for America,

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the father who has
disappeared, and realization

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of that dream-cum-nightmare,
the struggle

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to survive the
underclass's United States,

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the father who returns
but does not stay,

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the self-loathing
born of desiring

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the embodiment of a place
that does not want you.

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Díaz writes in the instructional
how to date a brown girl,

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black girl, white
girl, or halfie.

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Take down any
embarrassing photos

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of your family in
the campo, especially

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one of the half
naked kids dragging

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a goat on a rope leash.

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The kids are your cousins,
and by now, they're

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old enough to understand why
you're doing what you're doing.

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Hide the pictures of
yourself with an afro.

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Supply the story
about the loca who'd

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been storing
canisters of tear gas

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in his basement for years, how
one day the canisters cracked

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and the whole neighborhood got
a dose of the military strength

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stuff.

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Don't tell her your
moms knew right away

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what it was, that she
recognized that smell

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from the year the United
States invaded your island.

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Tell her that you love her
hair, that you love her skin,

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her lips, because in
truth, you love them

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more than you love your own.

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We are programmed,
it seems, organically

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predisposed to yearn for
the hyperbole of myth,

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that expression of humanity
on so grander scale

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is to become legend.

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Our myths instruct us,
teach us how to be.

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Gilgamesh, David, Jesus, the
Buddha, Confucius, Don Quixote,

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Miyamoto Musashi, Albert
Einstein, what are any of them

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other than superheroes
of strength,

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of compassion, of wisdom, of
vision, of unflagging belief?

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And Stalin, Hitler,
Pol Pot, Trujillo,

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are they anything more
than arch villains

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with quantified atrocities?

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And he whose name
cannot be said,

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known only in the brief
wondrous life of Oscar Wao

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as the Admiral.

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It's likely that
someone else would

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have intersected their ships
with the Americas had he

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not in 1492.

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But he did, and here we are

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And here in the Americas,
addressing what Díaz refers

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to as the American problem, we
find the protagonist of Oscar

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Wao, a superhero
in his own right,

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boundless love both his
superpower and his greatest

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curse.

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Who can love like the nerd boy?

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He who has the
vocabulary to express

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the depth of his unrequited
longing, the Socratic ideals

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of love pressed upon him by
sci-fi and fantasy novels.

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It's Oscar's story.

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It's our story.

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We have these myths
because we need them.

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Ladies and gentlemen, winner
of the National Book Critics

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Circle Award, Junot Díaz.

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[APPLAUSE]

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