Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Longreads, The Fader, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and included in The Best American Essays 2016.  She is the recipient of the 2019 Whiting Award in Nonfiction for “Ordinary Girls,” two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She lives in Miami Beach with her partner, the writer Lars Horn.

Things Discussed:

• Growing up in Puerto Rico
  
• Coming out to a Catholic family
  
• The tensions between the white and black sides of her family during childhood
  
• The silence around sexual violence
  
• Ethnic and racial identity - What am I?
  
• Practicing Catholicism and being gay
  
• Even the hardest family stories can give us strength
  
• The publishing industry
  
• Racism and learning to understand one another
  

Resources:

Jaquira’s new memoir, “Ordinary Girls” 

Jaquira on Instagram

Jaquira’s website

Bella Figura website

Dolores on Instagram