Junot Díaz First Latino Elected to Pulitzer Prize Board

Today is a day to celebrate for Latino Literature in the United States.  Latino voices in mainstream US publishing have largely been ignored for the past century.  Things are slowly changing, as we see today by the election of Dominican author and Pulitzer Prize winner, Junot Díaz to Columbia University's Pulitzer Prize Board.

Díaz is the first author of Dominican heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao.

According to Prize officials, Junot Díaz will be the first Latino to serve on the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Co-chairman David Kennedy describes Diaz's prose as a mixture of Dominican Spanish and American English, and says the board is looking forward to bringing that voice to the Board's deliberations as well.  Kennedy adds:

"Someone who is sensitive to and immersed in parts of our culture that haven't received the appreciation … they probably deserve."

 

Felicitaciones, Junot! Pa'lante!