Junot Díaz's Reading List

"These books in particular gave solace: Two superb collections of stories, from Krys Lee (“Drifting House”) and Tania James (“Aerogrammes”)."

"Two superb collections of stories, from Krys Lee (“Drifting House”) and Tania James (“Aerogrammes”)."

"Also Wasik and Murphy’s “Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus.”"

"But really, the book that most lifted me out of my bent clay was Ramón Saldívar’s “The Borderlands of Culture: Américo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary.” There’s a reason Saldívar won the National Humanities Medal."

"Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.” A book of extraordinary intelligence, humanity and (formalistic) cunning. Boo’s four years reporting on a single Mumbai slum, following a small group of garbage recyclers, have produced something beyond groundbreaking."

"In fiction, though, the ‘last truly great book’ I read has to be Alejandro Zambra’s “Bonsai.” A subtle, eerie, ultimately wrenching account of failed young love in Chile among the kind of smartypant set who pillow-talk about the importance of Proust."

"“Shikasta” was a book I used to see at the library a lot when I was growing up but which finally came into my hands when I was in college. A strange anti-novel that purports to be the history of our world from the perspective of our sympathetic alien caretakers... I’ve always wanted to write something with “Shikasta’s” scope, with its thematic and structural bravura."

"As for Bolaño, what can one say? One of our greatest writers, a straight colossus. Is there really anything in print even remotely approaching “By Night in Chile”? ... “By Night in Chile” is a master class in which Bolaño manages to distill the perverse brutal phantasmagorical history of an entire continent down to 150 seductive pages."

"That’s easy: the winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, Eduardo Corral’s collection, “Slow Lightning.” When I finished that book I bawled."

"K. J. Bishop’s “The Etched City.” I’m a sucker for lines like “He had numerous stories of recent adventure and suffering — specifically, his adventures and other people’s suffering, almost invariably connected — that he told with the air of an amiable ghoul.”"

"“The Femicide Machine,” by Sergio González Rodríguez. The notorious femicides in Juárez were not unknown to me, but González Rodríguez’s grisly post-mortem of the cultural, political and economic forces behind these atrocities would infuriate anyone."

"I loved Encyclopedia Brown as a kid. Donald Sobol passed recently, and that really brought it all back to me, how important his books were to my little self."

"I recommend one start with one of the country’s greatest poets, Pedro Mir, his “Countersong to Walt Whitman and Other Poems.” Pure genius."

"Then read Ginetta Candelario’s “Black Behind the Ears” for a superbly guided journey through the complexities of Dominican racial identity."

"Also Frank Moya Pons’s “The Dominican Republic: A National History” is excellent"

"and so is Julia Alvarez’s novel “In the Time of the Butterflies.”"

"Gish Jen’s “Typical American” is another one of my personal classics. A masterpiece of a novel bursting with wit, yearning and truth, and for an immigrant kid like me looking for an idiom with which to write about an experience that we in this country don’t talk about enough — absolutely indispensable."

"Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior” is not exactly a novel, but few books out there can rival its powerful vision of what it means to live simultaneously in two worlds."

"essays on craft by folks like Samuel R. Delany (his “About Writing” is spectacularly useful)."

"Yes, Jason Shiga’s “Empire State: A Love Story (or Not).” Oakland boy loses best female friend to N.Y.C. and takes a cross-country bus trip to try to transform friendship into love. A bicoastal heartbreaker, beautifully rendered and deeply moving."

"And Arundhati Roy because I’m still crushing on her mind and on “The God of Small Things.”"

"I’d have to say Roberto Bolaño is my No. 1; read “Last Evenings on Earth” and tremble."

"Like Samuel R. Delany’s “Dhalgren” (which in my opinion is one of the greatest and most perplexing novels of the 20th century)"

"Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” (to be an American writer or to be interested in American literature and not to have read “Beloved,” in my insufferable calculus, is like calling yourself a sailor and never having bothered to touch the sea)"

"Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” (so horrifyingly profound and compellingly ingenious it’s almost sorcery)."

"Maybe Octavia Butler’s “Dawn” (set in a future where the remnants of the human race are forced to “trade” genes (read: breed involuntarily) with our new alien overlords)."

"Or Gilbert Hernandez’s “Beyond Palomar” (if it wasn’t for “Poison River” I don’t think I would have become a writer)."

"Perhaps Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony” or Alan Moore’s “Miracle-man” or Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — books that changed everything for me."

"Perhaps Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony” or Alan Moore’s “Miracle-man” or Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — books that changed everything for me."

"Perhaps Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony” or Alan Moore’s “Miracle-man” or Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — books that changed everything for me."

"“Our Kind of People,” by Uzodinma Iweala, and “Mountains of the Moon,” by I. J. Kay. I loved Iweala’s first book, so I’m eager for this nonfiction follow-up"

"“Our Kind of People,” by Uzodinma Iweala, and “Mountains of the Moon,” by I. J. Kay. ...I’ve heard strong things about Kay’s debut."