New Yorker Fiction Podcast

I highly recommend checking out the New Yorker: Fiction podcast. The fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, speaks with an author who picks a short story, then the story is read. It's perfect for distracting oneself on ones long commute (ok, that's when I listen to it). It's a new podcast, and it looks like they only intend to add new stories once a month, which is a bit of a shame. Richard Ford reading a John Cheever story called "Reunion" is really quite amazing, but my favorite is Junot Díaz reading his own 1995 short story “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)." An initial listen might indicate that it's nothing more than a Dominican-American kid talking about how to get in a girl's pants, but it's rather wonderful (and funny) story about race, gender, and diaspora. Also, it's a beautifully produced piece led by Díaz's powerful voice and interspersed with a woman's voice as well. The "guest" author, Edwidge Danticat, defends Díaz's artistic expression to write about a young, latino man who, perhaps lacks some integrity, and how a story like this might be misinterpreted as autobiographical and, paradoxically, about all latino people. "No one assumes," she says, "that John Updike is writing about all white men."

I'm not familiar with Diaz's work, but I'm pretty excited to read more - here's a story online, "Homecoming, with Turtle." Same for Edwidge Danticat, here's another short story from the New Yorker by her.