This is from an older article (29 November 2013), but does this type of comment sound familiar? A repeated tactic through many historical moments and multiple geographic spaces: you are unpatriotic or un-Whatever. I guess it is not ironic that a small group of people who favor the Constitutional Court ruling that denationalizes tens of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent now accuse award-winning writer Junot Diaz of not being Dominican enough (as Diaz says, of “lack of Dominicanidad”) and therefore, of being cynical in his concern for the country. Sigh. . . So they want to “denationalize” the writer as well.

According to 7 Días, an an open letter sent on November 27, 2013, and signed “Intellectuals of the Dominican Republic,” Eduardo Gautreau de Windt, Pura Emeterio Rondón, Efraim Castillo, Roberto Marcallé, Oscar Holguín–Veras, Alex Ferreras, Néstor Medrano, and Camelia Michel responded to recent statements by award-winning writer Junot Diaz by calling him a “self-proclaimed” Dominican and labeling him as someone whose literary articulation is “mediocre and disrespectful.”

They then proceed to invite him to “to reflect on the sincerity of his roots in the beloved land of Caonabo, Enriquillo, Anacaona, Duarte, Sánchez, Mella, Luperón, Salomé Ureña, Pedro Henríguez [sic] Ureña and so many esteemed men and women of Dominican history and society,” stressing that the writer is ignorant of certain “fundamental issues of the recent and distant past of the Dominican Republic.”

As 7 Días points out Junot Díaz was born in Villa Juana in Santo Domingo and was raised by his mother and grandparents while his father worked in the United States.

[See the author’s response in our previous post: Junot Díaz on “la sentencia”.]

For full article and letter (in Spanish), see http://www.7dias.com.do/portada/2013/11/29/i152926_ocho-escritores-ponen-duda-dominicanidad-junot-diaz-acusan-ofensivo.html?fb_action_ids=10151864575958576&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.Up0HQdUKwvU.like&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B559265230816820%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22.Up0HQdUKwvU.like%22%5D#.Uqsf6fRDuSr