Junot Díaz Reads From “Drown”

Image by Christo­pher Peter­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I first heard about Junot Díaz in the ear­ly 90s. He was only in his 20s, already pub­lish­ing in The New York­er, and get­ting a lot of wun­derkind talk. By 1996, he pub­lished, Drown, a best­selling col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that earned high praise. And then, things slowed down. It took a good eleven years for him to pub­lish The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao. But the patience paid off. The nov­el won him a Pulitzer in fact. And it’s an excel­lent read. Real­ly.

Hav­ing said this, I want to high­light Díaz read­ing one of his ear­ly New York­er sto­ries that also found its way into Drown. It’s called How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Hal­fie). The free audio clip, which is list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books (and pro­duced by The New York­er), has some col­or­ful lan­guage, but it’s not gra­tu­itous.

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