The Dominican-American writer on the genesis of Oscar Wao, and why he wrote a book listening to the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack on a loop. His latest short-story collection, This Is How You Lose Her, which was a National Book Award finalist, is out in paperback next month.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up first in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, until I was 6 years old. Then from 6 to 18 in Parlin, New Jersey.
Where do you live and why?
I live half the time in Harlem, New York, and half in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I live in New York because it’s become my home and in Massachusetts because I have a job at MIT. In both places I have a strong Dominican community, and that’s important to me—it keeps me more or less whole.
What is your favorite course to teach and why?
So far probably the best would be a class in apocalyptic literature. I did a lot of work for that class, but what made the difference was that I got an incredible group of enthusiastic students. When it comes down to it, no matter how well curated a class is, it’s only as good as your students’ enthusiasm.
What are some of the books that you have them read in that class?
I had them read Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and Octavia Butler’s Dawn. I tried to get them to read The Turner Diaries, but they straight-out rebelled.
You edit fiction for The Boston Review. What do you look for in a great short story? And what would make you want to immediately slip a story into the paper shredder?
Ha! Well, nothing calls for the paper shredder like a story that the writer clearly hasn’t sat on. A story that hasn’t been rewritten, or rewritten enough. So many writers that I encounter send their work in so soon. It shows, it really does. In the end all of us are subjective when it comes to what we’re reading for. As an editor you try to expand that, become a little bit wider, because you’re publishing for a readership larger than yourself. In the end what I’m looking for, which I think is what everyone looks for, is something that sings. More technically, something that is aesthetically beautiful and that challenges people’s sense of the form, and of the world that they live in. We all want to be arrested, to walk away turning over a good piece of fiction in our head. That’s my guide.
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