drown: short stories by junot diaz

I’ve developed a literary crush on Junot Diaz since reading Drown, his collection of short stories, published a decade before the Pulitzer prize winning, Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao. With Drown, I was drawn in from the first story: set in the Dominican Republic, a kid and his tough older brother are sent by their mother to el campo in the summers, away from their urban neighborhood. Enemies at home, the brothers strike an uneasy truce in the hazy boredom of these summer trips. One day they set off to find a fabled boy with no face.

As a fledgling writer, I am grateful to these stories for helping me puzzle out some problems with my own writing project: how to connect and sequence stories; what to hold back. But mostly, I felt connected to these stories personally. Almost as if I remember the boy with no face in my own memory. Like maybe it was something that happened to me a long, long time ago. Like all my faraway summers in Carolina, staying with cousins, eating bullets off bushes and walking barefoot in hot sand. But it’s more than that. For me, these stories feel like they are in everyone’s memory. Like they belong to all of our pasts.

Which stories do you think speak to us all?

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push-up

Steve and Will doing pushups from Billy Hunt on Vimeo.

William and his Uncle Steve, in Poqouson

Video by Billy

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grandma and william: a love story in pictures

Photos by Papa Johnson

William loves his Grandma and his Mimi; and they adore him.

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inaguration day

Photo by Billy

This photo shows how we feel about the inauguration of Barrack Obama as our 44th president. William, Billy and I watched on the jumbo-trons, at John Paul Jones Arena, along with 3000 other Charlottesvillians. It wasn’t cold, or particularly hard to get there, but we stood from our stadium seats as the crowds stood on the mall stood in Washington, and we cheered along with them. Even William, two years old, understood it: that something special and rare and wonderful was going on.

Stand up, Mama! he said, Obama is up there. Mama, stand up with me!

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family portrait

Mimi and Grandmother

Uncle Steve and Billy II

Cousin Jala

Photos by Billy

Billy took these family portraits and many more over Christmas-time.

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writerhouse reading

Untitled from Billy Hunt on Vimeo.

video by Billy

It’s painful to watch yourself speak in public, but alas, we are past the age of privacy…
so here I am reading a short except from one of my middle school stories, The Water Cave.
You can read the remainder online at Salome Magazine (look for my name in the archives) or read a printable version here.

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if breast is best?

Photo by Billy

Driving home from work today, I heard Jill Lepore talking on NPR about her New Yorker article on the politics of breastfeeding. For me, a woman who stayed home for a year after having a baby, who breastfed her babe during that time, I was interested in what Lepore had to say. She spoke about the corporate focus on pumping, about Maternity Leave, and what guides public policy concerning mothers and children.

Personally, breastfeeding was a no brainer for me, but listening to Lepore speak, I wondered how much keener I’d be on having a second wee one, if I knew I wouldn’t have to start all over, professionally; if I didn’t have to contemplate pumping between second and third grade classes; if I had the possibility of more than 3 months of maternity leave…

How have public policies, technologies, and cultural norms affected how you’ve fed your babies?

Click to read the article here.

Here’s a look back at some thoughts on public breastfeeding…

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worth

computer drawing by me.

A short story I wrote a few years back, Worth, has been published this month at Literary Mama.
You can read it here.

bye bye 2008

William during spring break, in Mexico

Two of Will’s favorite places: McGuffey park and the Children’s Discovery Museum

Trees on fire and Halloween

Photos by Billy

Goodbye 2008. You’ve been good to us, if hard on the world in general. Here’s to the New Year.
What do you remember most from this bygone year?

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gifts III

In the video, my beloved big brother tries to explain his rationale for getting this scary hulk for his two year old nephew William, for X’mas

I got the Hulk for Billy from Billy Hunt on Vimeo.

Photo and video by Billy

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