And a link:
http://www.avclub.com/article/the-end-of-iwatchmeni-and-ibefore-watchmen-ozymand-101150
Monday, September 29, 2014
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Notes on the Mongoose
From an interview with Junot Díaz (http://labloga.blogspot.com/2007/10/guest-interview-junot-daz.html)
Q. I had chills whenever the mongoose appeared. What does the mongoose means to you and in relation to DR history?
A. The mongoose is funny because he’s my favorite character. He is the only real character. In the Díaz family cosmology, he’s the only real character in the whole book.
There’s a story my mom tells about encountering a mongoose. She was lost once so that in some ways inspired it. That character comes out of a childhood in the Dominican Republic being exposed to mongoose. And you see them and as a kid [but] you’ve never seen anything like it. They are extremely fast, extremely social, and clever.
And then of course you discover that they are immigrants to the island. There was something that pulled me about the image of another transplant - who is a really wild little trickster. In "Oscar," there is the actual footnote on the mongoose, where the narrator says that these could also be aliens.
I couldn’t explain it while I was writing it, but there was something about this family’s history that provoked an assistant from this mongoose character. It is almost as if because their life was so shitty, they are able to gain this luminous intervention from what might be an alien. That is what I thought was funny because some people have said, oh, this magic realism bit. And I am like, oh my God, it’s the exact opposite of it.
Also a story from The Jungle Book that stars a mongoose - as a protector of the family from snakes
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mongoose/rtt.html
Q. I had chills whenever the mongoose appeared. What does the mongoose means to you and in relation to DR history?
A. The mongoose is funny because he’s my favorite character. He is the only real character. In the Díaz family cosmology, he’s the only real character in the whole book.
There’s a story my mom tells about encountering a mongoose. She was lost once so that in some ways inspired it. That character comes out of a childhood in the Dominican Republic being exposed to mongoose. And you see them and as a kid [but] you’ve never seen anything like it. They are extremely fast, extremely social, and clever.
And then of course you discover that they are immigrants to the island. There was something that pulled me about the image of another transplant - who is a really wild little trickster. In "Oscar," there is the actual footnote on the mongoose, where the narrator says that these could also be aliens.
I couldn’t explain it while I was writing it, but there was something about this family’s history that provoked an assistant from this mongoose character. It is almost as if because their life was so shitty, they are able to gain this luminous intervention from what might be an alien. That is what I thought was funny because some people have said, oh, this magic realism bit. And I am like, oh my God, it’s the exact opposite of it.
Also a story from The Jungle Book that stars a mongoose - as a protector of the family from snakes
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mongoose/rtt.html
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Monday, September 22, 2014
The Original AmeRicans
A generation before Tato Laviera's poem "AmeRican", which debuted in 1985, came West Side Story, a Romeo and Juliet type musical showcasing inner city racial discourse in Manhattan during the late 1950s.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
2 Star-Crossed Afghans Cling to Love, Even at Risk of Death
- A contemporary take on the Rahim Khan story?
- A contemporary take on the Rahim Khan story?
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Monday, September 1, 2014
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