Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz writes powerful article on silently living with the trauma of childhood rape

Junot Diaz.
(Image credit: Andrew Toth/Getty Images for The New Yorker Festival)

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz published a powerful New Yorker article Monday that grapples with the trauma of being raped as a child. "I never told anyone what happened, but today I'm telling you," Díaz writes.

The piece is addressed to an anonymous "X" who asked Díaz — the author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This Is How You Lose Her — about the sexual abuse in his books, and if it had happened to him. Díaz writes that he was "too scared in those days to say anything" and that he "responded with some evasive bulls--t" to X's question. Years later, "I think about silence; I think about shame, I think about loneliness," Díaz reflects. "I think about the hurt I caused."

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.