Junot Díaz recently spoke out against the Dominican Republic’s court ruling that could strip citizenship from thousands of Haitian immigrants. Díaz, who was born in the DR, called the ruling racist.
His outspoken criticism has drawn disapproval from some well-known politicians and intellectuals on the island. In an email that was later published by Latino Rebels, Executive Director for the Dominican Presidency’s International Commission on Science and Technology José Santana called Díaz a “fake and overrated pseudo intellectual” who “should learn better to speak Spanish before coming to this country to talk nonsense.”
Díaz responded with a message on his Facebook page this week:
All these attacks are bullshit attempts to distract from the real crime — the sentencia itself which has been condemned widely. All of us who are believers need to keep fighting against the sentencia and what it represents and we need to keep organizing and we need to show those clowns in power in the DR that there is another Dominican tradition —based on social justice and human dignity and a true respect for the awesome contributions that our immigrants make everywhere.
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