From Salon.

As a short story writer, Junot Díaz found the magic alchemy of subject and style fast — maybe too fast. “Drown,” his debut collection, was published in 1996 to explosive acclaim. This was back in the Clinton era, halcyon days for political correctness and diversity initiatives, when globalism was not yet tethered to terror in the American mind. “Drown” issued a yawp from the Jersey barrio, a shout-out from a homeboy who hadn’t escaped and wasn’t sure he wanted to — and it soared past the gatekeepers into the pages of the New Yorker.

Eleven long years later, “Drown” has become that oxymoron, the contemporary classic, and its author a darling of MFA programs nationwide. By assaying the Dominican-American diaspora in lapel-grabbing prose, Díaz himself became something of an oxymoron: a Guggenheim Award winner who is de facto spokesperson for an entire immigrant community.