Presenter of the National Book Awards, our mission is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of great writing in America. Learn more here.
“I remember that I’m invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.” ― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Riverhead Books is proud to publish Junot Díaz, whose beloved novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won
the Pulitzer Prize and whose most recent story collection This Is How You Lose Her was a National Book Awards finalist. But
we are especially thrilled to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Drown, the book that sparked Junot’s tremendous literary career.
Published by Riverhead in 1996 to stunning critical acclaim around the world, Drown quickly became a national
bestseller and a cherished classic. It was one of the first books to illuminate
the lives of Dominican-American immigrants and served as “a front-line report
on the ambivalent promise of the American Dream” (San Francisco Chronicle).
In the years since we have received countless letters, e-mails and social media
posts from readers about the profound influence the story collection has had on
their lives. It has inspired young people all over the world to become teachers
or writers, to become more involved in their communities or to simply learn
more about themselves, their families, and their cultures. Drown launched Junot into the literary stratosphere but it is just
as incredible to see how a single book has been able to mobilize an entire
generation!
As part of its 20th anniversary celebration we asked you to
tell us what Drown means to you. We
read dozens of responses and picked a handful to share with everyone. Check
them out below! Have a story about Drown
that you’d like to share with us? Leave us a comment or reblog this post with
your story! We’d love to hear from you.
And if you still can’t get enough Junot Díaz you should listen to this
fantastic discussion about the book that aired on the national radio
program “The Diane Rehm Show,” then stay tuned to all of our social media
channels all summer for more Drown
anniversary fun!
***
“My first teaching job was in Washington Heights, Manhattan, which
is a primarily Dominican-American neighborhood above Harlem and below the South
Bronx. Interboro Institute was an urban community college designed for high school
dropouts, where students could get their GEDs and Associate Degrees simultaneously.
I taught from Junot Díaz’s Drown, and
on the first day of classes we read “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl,
Whitegirl, or Halfie” aloud. Students nodded and laughed. They taught me
what “malcriado” meant every semester and made sure I knew what government
cheese was. They were delighted to see their neighborhood, their community,
people like them, represented in literature. After spending three and a half
years as the only white person in the room, that for-profit school went out of
business, and I got my second teaching job at Yeshiva University, an Orthodox
Jewish school in the same neighborhood. I spent a year and a half as the only
non-Jew in the room, and the only woman. I kept teaching Díaz, and years later
Tzvi Twersky thanked me for introducing him to Drown because it made him appreciate the Heights more. I’ve since
taught from Drown at a tiny rural
school in Appalachia, in prisons, at a huge state school in Texas, and at my
alma mater in my hometown. The poorest and the richest students, the most
liberal and the most conservative, students who struggled to write Standard
English and ones who could have gone to the Ivies, have all read—and loved—Drown.” – Erin Stalcup, Flagstaff, AZ
“I broke up with a girl, she threw this book on my lap as she left
and reading it taught me to not throw beautiful things away. ‘Nuff said.” – Conlan LaRouche, Philadelphia, PA
“I was teaching for ten years in a bi-lingual college in the
neighborhoods of Argyle, Humbolt Park, and Little Village—on the South Side of
Chicago—in the nineties. These
neighborhoods were filled with immigrants.
The South Side was mostly Mexican, Argyle was mostly Vietnamese, and
Humbolt Park was mostly Puerto Rican. I
loved working with these populations, but in truth they taught me much more
than I could ever teach them. My
experience teaching immigrants and second generation immigrants provided a
backdrop for Díaz’s book, Drown. I
came across Drown after I moved to
Boston. A fellow writer, Diana Renn, recommended the book, and I fell in love
with it at once. Just like I was drowning, I fell into this book. Not as one would leap, jump or dive, but as
one would fall. I let myself fall from
preconception, judgment, or control. The book is short. Every night I would
allow myself a small section of the book.
I was like a junkie parceling out pages to luxuriate in. I wanted to stay in this world as long as I
could. I dreamed of meeting Junot to
thank him for this book. One day it
happened. He came to my school to read
his most recent book. Thank you for
capturing a time and place perfectly!” –
Gloria Monaghan, Boston, MA
“My Dominican mother and forever island child from Las Matas De
Farfan, Gricelides Saex, gave me my beloved copy of Drown. While not an exact mirror of my personal experience, Drown gave me a sense of validity and
reassurance, as here was a place where a Dominican author was exploring the
complexities of hybrid Latino identity and struggle, at the epicenter of a
deep, dark and touching story. My own hybrid Latino identity felt validated. I
could appreciate the influence of my cultural roots while still living my
weird, mixed up, punk rock life, without having to feel sorry or ashamed of it.
I remember not being able to put Drown
down: it’s a fluid read and I soaked up the Spanglish (which spoke volumes to
my Jewminican self – a teenager in the midst of a continual, ever evolving
identity crisis). The mere mention of “mangu” induced a hunger to continue
devouring page upon page, and also to be sitting in my grandmother’s
kitchen chowing down on Dominican food.” – Emily Saex, Los Angeles, CA
“I am a South Bronx teacher to 6-12 English Language Learners. This book has opened doors of conversations for my emigrant bilingual students. They love the connections they make, the stories that are told, and the amazing writing they are reading in both English and Spanish.” – Brendaly Torres, New York, NY
I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing.
The National Endowment for the Arts just announced some exciting news for its Big Read, including the addition of 13 new books (several of which have been recognized by the National Book Awards) to its library! Learn more here.
Swedish artist Susanna Hesselberg
recently constructed a library that plunges into an infinite abyss.
Visible only from above ground, the intriguing installation is
inconspicuously marked and, from a distance, looks as though it’s just a
square frame laying on the grass. As viewers approach it, however, they
can easily see the stacks of books descending into the earth. Its
compact structure is reminiscent of a mining shaft or water well with no
apparent bottom.
Revisit these titles recently honored by the National Book Awards while you’re lounging poolside this Fourth because there is so much American history to read about.
Written by acclaimed historian Jill Lepore, this 2013 National Book Award Finalist for nonfiction recounts the life of the other Franklin—Benjamin Franklin’s sister, Jane. The biography illuminates decades of letter-writing between Jane and Ben Franklin, establishing their close relationship, and revealing the ways in which gender, along with Jane’s 12 children, led the siblings to lead two very distinct lives.
Both a 2014 National Book Award Winner for fiction and a 5 Under 35 honoree, Redeployment by Phil Klay, is a collection of short stories thematically linked by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stories in the collection attempt to make sense of the trauma and chaos of contemporary war, both on the front lines of battle and at home.
Longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award for young people’s literature, X tells the story of Malcolm X from his childhood through his early 20s. Based on his actual life and written by his third daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, the book reimagines the formative years of one of the most influential figures in recent American history.
Some Luck by Jane Smiley, which was longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award for fiction, tells the story of Rosanna and Walter Langdon and their family of five children. Starting in Iowa at the end of the first World War, each chapter of the book covers a single year in the lives of the Langdon family, charting the course of American history through the beginning of the 1950s.