Junot Díaz is having a #metoo moment that was a long time coming. I think the first open accusation was from Zinzi Clemmons, in this tweet:
As a grad student, I invited Junot Diaz to speak to a workshop on issues of representation in literature. I was an unknown wide-eyed 26 yo, and he used it as an opportunity to corner and forcibly kiss me. I'm far from the only one he's done this 2, I refuse to be silent anymore.
— zinziclemmons (@zinziclemmons) May 4, 2018
Shortly thereafter, both Carmen Machado and Monica Byrne related their own experiences. Carmen’s is in a Twitter thread starting here:
During his tour for THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER, Junot Díaz did a Q&A at the grad program I'd just graduated from. When I made the mistake of asking him a question about his protagonist's unhealthy, pathological relationship with women, he went off for me for twenty minutes. https://t.co/7wuQOarBIJ
— Carmen Maria Machado (@carmenmmachado) May 4, 2018
Monica’s was on Twitter, and at greater length on Facebook:
There have since been this damning story from Alisa Valdes, an overview article in The Cut, and I’m sure more to come.
I’m writing this post to bear witness. I was present for the events related by both Carmen Machado and Monica Byrne. Things happened as they described. I watched the belittling histrionics Junot Díaz displayed in response to Carmen’s questions in Iowa City, with his subsequent tantrum of a reading. I was seated next to Monica in North Carolina when Díaz, on her other side, lectured the table about VIDA statistics and the sexist silencing of women in literature, only to actively interrupt or condescendingly dismiss the woman novelist right beside him whenever she tried to contribute to the conversation.1
Carmen is telling the truth. Monica is telling the truth. I have absolutely no doubt that Zinzi Clemmons and Alisa Valdes are telling the truth. For all the discussion to come, this much is without question: these things happened, just as described.
An ironic cherry to go atop that farce: in both instances he employed the rhetorical tactic of treating his female interlocutors like underachieving students, beginning dismissive comments with something like, “One of the first things we teach students at MIT is….” Monica, as it happens, has a masters degree from MIT. ↩
Julie22
May 7, 2018 — 2:59 pm
Maybe it’s just me, but other than the allegation of a forcible kiss, I see nothing that would rise to the level of a MeToo. And at this point, it’s still an allegation. If it’s true, then he should settle.
As for the other allegations, he yelled at somebody at a dinner party? He yelled while defending his work at a book conference? The journalist whose essay you linked sounds like a jealous ex who thinks that his literary career should have been hers. Sorry, but yelling and being a jerk is not a crime. Neither is having the career others think they are entitled to.
I don’t see him losing his career over this.
Eugene Fischer
May 7, 2018 — 3:12 pm
“Sorry, but yelling and being a jerk is not a crime.”
I never said it was.
“I don’t see him losing his career over this.”
I never said he would.
This post was written in response to social media conversation calling in to question the validity of the accounts themselves. As I said, my purpose is to bear witness. These things did happen. I was there for two of them, and I believe the others. My only interest in writing this was to refute the immediate response that these women are liars.
Keffy
May 7, 2018 — 4:01 pm
“… sounds like a jealous ex.”
I’m appalled and flabbergasted that anyone actually thought this was a legitimate comment to make on a post about this issue. I mean, holy shit.
Julie22
May 7, 2018 — 6:31 pm
I’m shocked that nobody else finds her essay problematic.
I said she sounded jealous because of statements like this:
“I was also pissed off that the Pulitzer committee rewarded Diaz with a prize for a book that, in many ways, wasn’t that different from my own debut novel.”
She then concludes (without any evidence) that nominating committees full of “white liberals” prefer his books to hers because they’re about “downtrodden immigrants.” Could it be that he’s just a better writer and storyteller?
She also says (without evidence) that he was threatened by her talent. When they met she had never published a book and didn’t even have a completed manuscript. Why would he be threatened by an unpublished author? It makes no sense.
She also makes it clear that she wanted access to his connections in the publishing industry. She wasn’t a student or anybody subordinate to him. These were two adults who were the same age. She writes that she agreed to sleep with him after he said that he would get her work to “the right people.”
She went back several times after they had sex, but he was too much of a creep for her to put up with so she left. So he got what he wanted (sex), but she didn’t get what she wanted (his connections). That’s the issue. And he went on to become a more successful and celebrated author than she did moving in circles she feels should be hers. That’s the other issue.
That’s not a MeToo moment. That’s just life. Her success or lack of it has nothing to do with him.
Charlotte
May 8, 2018 — 8:23 am
I think Valdes was adding to the general narrative that Diaz is a guy who has made his living acting like a woke feminist in public while treating women shabbily in private. Whether that rises to the level of a MeToo moment is debatable. She also has some justifiable anger that while he gets to write misogynist material and be lauded for it (while simultaneously being misogynistic himself but pretending he’s not), her own material, about confident, multilayered, strong Latinas, was ignored by the establishment. (This is something most female writers deal with – men who write about relationships and families are lauded as geniuses, women who the same are dismissed as “chick lit writers,” given cheesy covers, and not reviewed anywhere important.)
I was a little bewildered that she referred to him as her “boyfriend” and her “soul mate” after having spent one night with him, and apparently two more short-lived visits to his apartment, where he confessed he had a girlfriend already and asked her to clean up his messy kitchen. No one is your boyfriend or soul mate after that short amount of time, even if you think so.
That said, I think she’s just adding to the general “this guy is a major hypocrite” narrative. I make no judgments on whether that particular narrative means he should lose his job, reputation, etc.
Apparently there are much worse stories forthcoming, so….
Charlotte
May 8, 2018 — 9:57 am
I’d also like to point out that while for eons powerful men could (and did) destroy women’s careers with one comment (ie “She’s difficult” “She can’t take a joke” “She seems angry” etc) women have to gather together an entire Army to have a complaint taken seriously. Look how many had to band together to bring down Cosby or Weinstein. So you will hear some stories in this case that aren’t necessarily sexual assault but that are one woman backing another woman backing another woman about a general pattern of behavior.
Cv345
June 19, 2018 — 1:28 am
[Aggressive commentary about “leaked” audio and general name-calling redacted by site owner.]
Eugene Fischer
June 19, 2018 — 10:33 am
Audio doesn’t “leak” when the fact that there’s a recording is mentioned by the person making the initial accusation. Carmen referred people to it in the thread linked to above. The rest of the removed comment was vague justifications for calling my friends rude names.
Clearly people are searching out this post, likely as a result of the New York Magazine profile of Carmen (for which I was interviewed). I decline to host attacks on Carmen or Monica on my website, nor am I interested in spending time moderating intermittent offshoots from a very broad and public conversation that is primarily happening elsewhere. Comments on this post are now disabled.