What Is Hip-Hop if Not Poetry: An Interview with Jaquira Díaz
“Why are you so drawn to terrible people?” the author Jaquira Díaz was once asked. “How come all the people you write about are in prison?” Fortunately for readers, Díaz was never discouraged by such notions of literary propriety. “Terrible people” in the eyes of some—runaways, addicts, criminals, child killers—are not merely the people she’s drawn to, they’re the subjects of her remarkable, heartrending debut memoir, Ordinary Girls. As she portrays her life growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami, Díaz introduces us to a range of unruly women—her mother; her “reckless and unafraid” schoolgirl friends, Chanty, Boogie, and China; and her younger self, a bright girl who learns and loves to “fight dirty,” who moves uneasily through juvenile detention centers, the military, and, ultimately, academia. Though she explores her own coming-of-age, Díaz is, above all, interested in the girls, not the girl. She avoids the often unbearable solipsism of memoir by turning her fierce and compassionate gaze on the lives of her friends, tracing the tropical fervor of their adolescence, the moments they break free, the moments they offer each other loyalty and joy. The memoir is rife with a rare energy; it’s never staid or sorrowful or sordid. Díaz excels at capturing the pulse and beat of life. Even in the bleaker moments of the book—Díaz’s suicide attempts and drug binges, the mystery surrounding a neighborhood mother accused of killing her three-year-old son—Díaz’s voice is steadfast, unflinching, yet mournful
