Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ten years after publishing the short-story collection
Drown
, Junot Díaz received critical
acclaim for his 2007 novel
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
, a stylistically invent-
ive story of a self-professed Dominican nerd in New Jersey and the tragic history of his
family in the DR. Less well known, but perhaps a more devastating picture of the Domin-
ican diaspora's rejection of the conventional American Dream, is Maritza Pérez's
Geo-
graphies of Home
. For Spanish readers, other recommended young Dominican authors are
Pedro Antonio Valdés
(Bachata del angel caído, Carnaval de Sodoma),
Rita Indiana
Hernández
(La estrategia de Chochueca, Papi)
and Aurora Arias
(Inyi's Paradise, Fin del
mundo, Emoticons)
.
In the Time of the Butterflies
is an award-winning novel by Julia Álvarez, about three
sisters slain for their part in a plot to overthrow Trujillo. Also by Álvarez is
How the Gar-
cía Girls Lost Their Accents,
describing an emigrant Dominican family in New York. Oth-
er well-known contemporary Dominican writers include José Goudy Pratt, Jeannette
Miller and Ivan García Guerra. A recommended Spanish language website focused on
past and contemporary Dominican writers is
www.escritoresdominicanos.com
.
AN UNLIKELY MAN OF LETTERS
Joaquín Balaguer, president of the DR from 1960 to 1962, 1966 to 1978, and from 1986 to 1996, was
a writer as well as a strongman ruler. He published over 50 works, from poetry and biographies to cri-
ticism and a novel. Maybe his most infamous work was his autobiography
Memorias de un Cortesano
de la Era de Trujillo
(Memoirs of a Courtesan in the Era of Trujillo). In it he includes a blank page,
which refers to the murder of outspoken Dominican journalist Orlando Martinez Howley in 1975.
Balaguer apparently intended the page to be a memorial to Howley and assigned someone to reveal
the details of the assassination - Balaguer denied he gave the orders - after his death. He died in 2002
and no one has come forward.
