"This stunning collection of stories offers an unsentimental glimpse of life among the immigrants from the
Dominican Republic--and other front-line reports on the ambivalent promise of the American dream--by an
eloquent and original writer who describes more than physical dislocation in conveying the price that is paid for
leaving culture and homeland behind." --San Francisco Chronicle.
Junot Diaz's stories are as vibrant, tough, unexotic, and beautiful as their settings - Santa Domingo, Dominican
Neuva York, the immigrant neighborhoods of industrial New Jersey with their gorgeously polluted skyscapes.
Places and voices new to our literature yet classically American: coming-of-age stories full of wild humor,
intelligence, rage, and piercing tenderness. And this is just the beginning. Diaz is going to be a giant of American
prose.
--Francisco Goldman
Ever since Diaz began publishing short stories in venues as prestigious as The New Yorker, he has been touted as a
major new talent, and his debut collection affirms this claim. Born and raised in Santo Domingo, Diaz uses the
contrast between his island homeland and life in New York City and New Jersey as a fulcrum for his trenchant
tales. His young male narrators are teetering into precarious adolescence. For these sons of harsh or absent fathers
and bone-weary, stoic mothers, life is an unrelenting hustle. In Santo Domingo, they are sent to stay with relatives
when the food runs out at home; in the States, shoplifting and drugdealing supply material necessities and a bit of
a thrill in an otherwise exhausting and frustrating existence. There is little affection, sex is destructive, conversation
strained, and even the brilliant beauty of a sunset is tainted, its colors the product of pollutants. Keep your eye on
Diaz; his first novel is on the way.
--Booklist
