![]() ![]() Perhaps if my favorite college English professor hadn’t suggested I read Junot Díaz’s work years prior, when I argued the canon was too white, I would have fallen in love with Edwidge Danticat or Isabel Allende first. Now, in the wake of the allegations against Diaz, I’ve felt compelled to revisit the words of the works I loved so much. On the train, several people put their phones down and listened too, so I wasn’t too careful to hide the verse, to cover up the swears, to be unapologetically loud. ![]() After his talk, during which he was promoting his new children’s book, I sat on the train with my boyfriend and read aloud to him from the collection, trying to inject all of the flavor of the rich language of the text. Maybe because I was with my boyfriend, or perhaps because the store was crowded, or even because he had grown after all, he was nothing but kind and encouraging. ![]() That because of his books, I have pursued a more ambitious and risky artistic career. I told him, through my own stuttering, that I’m a graduate student, and a writer, and that his books encouraged me to imagine myself and my family in fiction. Two months before the #MeToo movement circled in on Junot Díaz’s mistreatment of women writers, I met him at a book store in Porter Square in Somerville. ![]() This time, we asked : What’s a book you misunderstood? Novel Gazing is Electric Literature’s personal essay series about the way reading shapes our lives. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work. ![]()
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