Junot Diaz On His First Children’s Book And Why He’ll Never Have Kids

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz stops by to discuss the recent release of his first children’s book, Islandborn, but ends up opening up about why he’ll never be a father himself. Later on, Fatherly’s science editor, Josh Krisch, stops by to discuss at what age children develop thoughts on race. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
To actually be present takes a lot of work. I've
fought with everything I had to try to be present
for my godchildren, even in this tiny, tiny, tiny little
window that I have. Because you know, Blomno, you're asked
to play one little position in this game called family,
you should at least play it well, play it with
some gusto, you know, play it with some dedication. And

(00:23):
I figured, I'm never gonna be a father. I can't
show anything there, so I'll show my talent in my
little corner I can show. Hi. Welcome to the Fatherly Podcast.
I'm your host, Joshua david Stein. My guest today is
Pulitzer Prize winning author Juno Diaz, author of The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar, Wow, This Is How You Loser Drown,

(00:47):
and most recently, Ireland Born, his first children's book. We're
such big fans of Juno Diaz over at Fatherly that
we chose to break our father's only rule for the podcast.
Juno is the first non dad that we've ever interview.
He is, however, the godfather of many, or as he
calls it, Pedrino. Our conversation covered a lot of topics

(01:07):
from his own father to why he will never be
a father himself and his regrets and relief about that.
To how to write literature for adults and children which
give them the space to participate. Juno d has It's
famous for his voice as it comes through his literature,
but actually having a conversation with him, you see that
voice come to life. He utters beautifully formed sentences that

(01:30):
you let roll on by and only later you realize
their profundity. It's one of my favorite conversations I've ever
gotten to have on the podcast or not. I really
enjoyed it. I hope you will too. Stay tuned wellgome
too a folly podcast. My name is Jashua, David's died.
I hope you'll endlay yourself well. J You know, I

(01:52):
want to maybe congratulate you on being the first non
father on the Fatherly Podcast. We're breaking all the rules
for you. Damn all right, how do you think you'll
be as a father? In three words? Push over? Weak?
We push over, there'll do it. I was like, godfather,
I'm the weakest push over, so I imagine it'll continue.

(02:14):
Describe your father in three words um, sadistic, brutal, and militarized.
Did he serve in the military. And he served in
the military and the Medican military and took that with
him for the rest of his life. Obviously, sadistic, militarized,

(02:34):
and brutal are not the most positive ways of describing
a person. Do you think that it all contributes to
why you aren't a dad? I have no doubts about that.
I think my mother is always wondering why don't you
have any kids? And I look at my mother. We're
five children, and both of my sisters have children, and

(02:58):
none of my brothers have child You could not have
picked three brothers so on alike, um and all of
us struggled with having a lot of girlfriends. So it
wasn't as if there was some lack of opportunity, you know,
like we were like coasting or anything. I think, you know,
there's certain kinds of people that really alter your vision

(03:23):
towards family and even your vision towards trust inside of intimacy,
and my dad did up perfect number on his sons
in a way that he wasn't able to kind of
completely get inside my sister's heads. You didn't know your dad,
Is this correct? Your dad wasn't around for a large
chunk of first six years for six years because he

(03:45):
was in the States and you were in the Dominican Republic,
and then you settled in Jersey. As its famously chronicled
in many of your I don't know famously, but it
is chronicled semi famously. No, I would just say chronicled. Yeah,
it's chronicled. Well, let me just as what did you
read as a kid. You're here because you're great and
we want to talk to you. Also because you have

(04:05):
a children's book called Island Borne just came out. But
what kind of stuff were you reading as a kid
from a children's literature standpoint that stuck out to you?
If anything, a lot. I mean again, I don't have
a lot of experience with picture books, which is great,
and neither a parent nor read a lot of picture
books when I was young. By the time I learned English,
the picture book phase was over. I kind of missed

(04:28):
that entire part of my life. I started reading you
know what young readers were reading and uh, and I
was actually compensated from my terrible speaking of English. It
took me a very long time to actually speak English.
The fact that I'm quote unquote so fluent in English
still makes me laugh when I considered Um the origins

(04:51):
of my English, and so I was reading things like
a Watership Down book had an enormous impact. And then
of course my library, this is in Jersey in the seventies,
still had a lot of old books that I don't
think you always find these days in public library system.
So we had everything Enid Blyton wrote, that beloved British writer.

(05:12):
I was reading Enid Blatan, which is like kind of
what people were doing in the sixties, but here I
was reading it had an enormous impact on me. There was,
you know, all these kind of kids books that you
get really kind of obsessed with anybody who was leaving
home and going on an adventure. I was all about that.
There's something in the literature, the children's literature that just
echoes with kids in a way that I don't think

(05:33):
that they don't think to themselves, I identify with that character.
It's not that explicit, it's just sort of this deep
mystic residence. Like I grew up reading Um where the
Wild Things Are, and just the idea of Max kind
of wanting to leave the island, you know, with the
wild things and kind of being in power but not
really being in power and missing the people he loved.

(05:54):
I didn't know it at the time. I had to
look back at it and think, oh man, that was
what I was going through. That sophisticated, very sophisticated. You're
a godfather, and then who are you a godfather too? Um?
I can break him down. My two oldest god daughters,
Camilla and Dahlia, they're Dominicans from the Bronx. Their father,
their mother, Sandra, I am organized with for many many

(06:14):
years up in Washington Heights. My god daughters my oh no,
she's Japanese, Taiwanese, my best friend's daughter twins Matteo in India,
you know. And then I have got child. What's really
kind of sad is that, Um, I have like a
godson who I never see, so I almost even though

(06:36):
I'm the godfather. That's my one kind of big failure
as a godfather. You know, I don't see Sebastian enough
to even really claim it. Where is he? You know,
that's the scary part. He lives right outside of Boston.
I actually see my Japanese goddaughter more than I see
my outside of Boston godson. What does it being a
godfather mean for you as a quasi parental relationship. You know,

(06:58):
people take it with different love was a seriousness as
a tradition that god parent was the person who took
care of your kids when you got obliterated. They were
literally formalized allow parents. And this was important in the
kind of Catholic tradition. And it's because the Caribbean and
Latin America, it's really really important. Children need somebody to
kind of make sure that there's a kind of a

(07:19):
backup reading oscar Inca, the way that family kind of
functions to rescue other family because there was so much
obliteration of the family units. Oh yeah, man, you needed redundancy.
Godparents are like kind of an excellent cultural social redundancy.
And so depending on the friend, I have different expectations.

(07:40):
It's like a car wash. It's like what kind of level,
what level gunfather you get? Yeah, most of my friends
are pretty damn serious that they expect me if anything
happens to put their damn kids to private school. That's
a given, you know. So in some ways it can
just be kind of a ceremonial role. In other ways
it could be really profound responsibility. I for the most part,

(08:01):
take it as a profound responsibility. The Fatherly Podcast is
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Snack like you. And now back to the show. What
do your god kids call you? A lot of terrible

(08:43):
things again, most of them call me deal or uncle.
The ones who speak Spanish will call me bardino, which
is godfather, which is incredibly funny. When you're called you know,
you just started laughing because I knew were they were
godfathers for real? Feel like I'm play acting. Still, what
has been the moment You've been most proud of as

(09:03):
a godfather and why the invitation to any alloe parent
his absence to not be present. There's always a temptation
for you not to be there. There's always a temptation
for you to make excuses of why you can't go
to the game, why you can't go to this event,
why this year you can't make that trip to Japan.

(09:24):
I've actually avoided that pretty consistently. I feel the same
way as a father as well. There is a smaller
kind of area where you can step out, but it
is very easy to make excuses to stay at work
that extra hour to go out, and life rolls on.
Your kids grow up, but they're not going to grow
up knowing you as well. No, I I see it.
I mean I see it all my friends who are

(09:45):
actual fathers. That disassociation. Man, You know, being present doesn't
as you all know, this is ther world. You know
that being president doesn't mean you're present. To actually be
present takes a lot of work. And uh, I've fought,
if everything I had to try to be present for
my godchildren, even in this tiny, tiny, tiny little window

(10:05):
that I have. Because you know, pomno, you're asked to
play one little position in this game called family you
should at least play it well, play it with some gusto,
you know, play it with some dedication. And I figured,
I'm never going to be a father. I can't show
anything there, So I'll show my talent in my little
corner I can show. Do you think you're never gonna

(10:27):
be a dad? Yeah? I think I'm never gonna be
a dad. Yeah. I feel uncomfortable asking, but do you
regret that or have you come to peace with it?
Or how do you relate to that? That's a good question.
I mean, I think what I regret is having the
father I had. But I'd never lived a life where
I had children, so I don't know what to compare

(10:47):
it to. And I'm involved in a community where you
spend a lot of time with children. Well, I think
what's weird about kind of gringo life is that, you know,
not all gringos, not all wife folks, not all Americans.
It I think they're much more atomized. It seems to
me they have to call each other to tell that
they're coming over, or they make dates. You know that

(11:09):
ship don't fly and dominicant culture, the idea that somebody
would call you before they come over. It's absurd. My partner,
she's Chinese American. Let me tell you, she went through
a cultural shock when she realized that anyone could knock
at my door at any hour and not only would
be welcome, but we were going to make food for them.
And that wasn't just an abstraction. She saw it. The

(11:31):
first week we were dating, we had a two in
the morning. The doorbell rang, and she was like, what
the hell, don't answer it. I'm like, don't answer it.
That's probably my friends and family and exactly who it was.
And there she is in a bathrobe, you know, trying
to put tea out. Uh. And that's true also with children.
You spend a lot of time with children and intergenerationally,
not just with children, but also with the generations above. Yeah,

(11:52):
and so I guess my thing was, it's not as
if I don't have a lot of contact with children,
and that I don't ask myself this question all the time.
I think, if you're a person who doesn't see children
at all or rarely, it's far easier to not think
about it. But I'm telling you, if I'm not here
every day, I'm surrounded by kids, um who are related
to me, and I'm sitting here thinking, my god, am

(12:14):
I doing the right thing every day? So I feel
like I've rectified myself to it. I'm not sure. You
never are sure. My partner doesn't want any kids. Um,
she's about to turn forty. I assume that's not not
gonna have any other partners. One always assumes, and so
we'll never know. But right now it seems to be

(12:34):
that's where it's gonna go. Yeah, I think um as
a dad myself, I have two kids, Achilles and Augie.
There four and six great names. Joe. One of the
things when I first became a dad, it was the
biggest challenge for me was to not just reenact the
trauma that I felt as a kid. I'm my own kids.
I think what you said resonates. Your dad sucked you

(12:56):
up so much you didn't think that you could be
a good dad. I felt the same way. And it's
been this long journey. You know, they're not that old,
but it feels like a long time of trying to
figure out what my limits are and what my boundaries
as a person are. Who am I and can I
be more than what I have been? And you know,

(13:16):
everyone has their resources and they've got like different fuel tanks.
I mean, for me, I think one of the things
that also kind of made it clear was this idea
of being present for young people, this idea of really
being here for those of us who suffer from mental illness.
That creates another question. I mean, I enter into depressive

(13:38):
episodes that last for years, and I often tell myself,
my God, am I glad that I didn't have a
child who would have went from year one to year
three without a father. Absence, they say, is not as
terrible as neglect in the psychological literature, the damage that

(13:58):
that would have done, because you know, any of us
who goes through these episodes, especially profound episodes, no that
you're not there in any way that makes any sense.
And so you know, maybe this is just me justifying
it to myself. But when I look back up my life,
even the last twenty years, there are more holes than
there are presences, And there's a part of me that's like,

(14:20):
for whatever said and done, the one thing I haven't
done in these last twenty years is fun the kid up,
which I would most certainly have had if they've been around.
What heirloom did your father give to you? If any
my father when he left, he left the US with
a bunch of firearms. I was one of those families

(14:40):
where if you broke into the house, you would better
come with swat team. I grew up shooting guns. I
grew up on the rifle range every weekend with other
Dominicans or like a broad swath of Jersey guns. In
New Jersey, it was gun culture. That was like the
whitest ship I'd ever seen. Yeah, that gun was my

(15:01):
dad's race. That was his race. I mean he believed
in guns the way like helicopter parents believe in checking in. Yeah. Yeah,
So he left us with a bunch of firearms, and
he left us with twenty two that I particularly took
a shine to, probably not for the best of reasons,
but whatever. I grew up in Philadelphia, but my stepdad

(15:26):
he was a gun nut. To My dad was a
gun nut. Yeah. He's Japanese American, and we used to
go to the range and there would be such a
crazy cross section of like his rural p a so
like white supremacists, basically him this Japanese dude, like a
couple of black guys maybe sometimes and you could tell
they didn't like each other. But still everyone was loaded

(15:49):
to the teeth, so it's very like polite dance of
you know, picking up your casings and like very It
was a really bizarre scene. And yeah, you know, I
felt it as a kid. I went to the rifle
range and I'm like, yo, I would feel safer over
by the targets. Then I feel with half these white
dudes because they're looking at it's like yo. And they
were happy to mutter the N word to us. They're

(16:11):
lucky my dad didn't hear it, because I had the
kind of dad who had no problem going to prison forever.
And that's not the greatest thing to be worried about
when you're a game, you know. And in some places
it's improved a lot. I can talk to you about this,
but most of my friends have no idea that I
spent any time with guns. I talk about it as

(16:32):
much as someone talks about the fact that their family
used to belong to an apocalyptic cult. You know, unless
you're getting paid for it, you keep your mouth shut.
Every now and then, though, some friends will say, hey,
you know, let's go shooting guns, and then they discover
that I actually shot for a while, you know, And
things have improved in certain places, certainly in New Jersey,
it's a lot more diverse than it used to be.

(16:53):
You know, I went shooting in New Jersey and I'm like, yo,
it does not look like what it was with my
childhood described the dads special for dinner. But now we're
saying the Juno Dass special. Yeah, the Godfather Godfather special. Yeah. Man, No,
because I get you know again, you know, like what
your friends figure out in a deep way that you're
not going to abuse their child and that you will

(17:16):
fight to the death for them. Once they figure out
you're a real alo parent, all sorts of straight stuff
starts happening, you know. One of them is make sure
these dad kids get something to eat. So my problem
is is I can't cook for ship. The other thing, though,
that I have an advantage is is that, uh, I'm
one of the reason that food culture has gone to ship.
It is because all of us are foodies. Now, you know,

(17:38):
I'm one of these people who always knows where there's
a good restaurant to feed some kids at. So my
god children always happy if I'm the one taking them
down did their meal, because they know they're gonna they're
gonna eat like wild fun ship. What kind of stuff
do you well you were talking earlier. You know, I'm Dominigan.
I'm a Caribbean person of African descent. I love all
my Caribbean food. The big treat usually from my god

(18:00):
children will be like Jamaican food because from the Spanish
to the English Caribbean, it's like a nice for them.
It feels mad exotic. Again, a lot of my Dominican
god children weren't raised with Japanese food until I became
their god father. And now they're all big Japanese food
fans because I have this connection to Japan. These girls
and the Bronx, they were the Bronx for them. Eating

(18:22):
out was eating Italian Arthur Avenue. Yeah, Man, I was like, Yo,
We're gonna go get Japanese food downtown. It was like,
I wouldn't want to put too much on it, but
certainly Japanese food is the top food. And Ethiopian food.
I'm a biggie the open food fans, so it allows
me to take all sides Ethiopian food. My god daughters
will talk endlessly about where they first ate Ethiopian and

(18:42):
how they learned about it, and same goes for the
rest of them. So those are my things. I tend
to try to cross train them in diet so that
when they grow up we can all eat together. Are
you religious, Well, you're a godfather in your name. The
thing was, I was raised the syncretized hybridized Africanized Catholicism

(19:04):
of the Caribbean, Like no question, there's no pope that's
going to show up to my family and not see
wild African paganism written all over our altars, our ancestor worship,
the sort of the ways that we celebrated the calendar,
you know that still abides in me. My numinous relations

(19:29):
to my ancestors has never left me, no matter how
far away I've come from Catholicism, no matter how the
sort of kind of the empirical world as gripped be
over the religious. And there's no question that my older
god children are very aware that this model that I

(19:51):
present of having a powerful relations with my ancestors, which
is you know, very much part of the to be
an African religious traditions. What's funny is that my Japanese
god daughter already has this built in to her Buddhism.
So the overlap there or to say that the dissonance
there is nonexistent. Right. It also made me think I

(20:13):
was in Philadelphia for the weekend alone in this book,
the Brief one Dress Life of Oscar Will, it kept
me wonderful company. And it kept me company because it's
not just one story. It's like you have a whole
family that you open that book and you have all
the ancestors and you have just such a rich life.
Everywhere I went with that book, people would come and

(20:35):
talk to me about it. Be eating alone, it's gonna
be like that's my favorite book, and it come sit
down and it's like, all of a sudden, I had friends.
So thank you for making me not lonely for a weekend.
So I first read Island Born before I read this,
right sure. One of the things that I've found so
interesting about Island Born is just like you did in
your books for adults, you don't overly explain things and

(20:56):
make it explicit. It's kind of like the reader me
a kid whoever has to go on a journey to
discover it for themselves. In Island Born, obviously it's with
Lola and the monster, and there's no reveal like this
is actually true? HEO like you have to do that
on your own. Can you talk to me a little
bit about how that approach that you've taken your adult

(21:18):
literature translated into island borne? I mean, ultimately my central
strategy or kind of a an important esthetic philosophy is
that reading his collaboration. We understand this, but one has
to think of it in some ways more technically. Lots
of things have to happen for a book to work well,

(21:38):
but one of the most important realms that a writer
has to kind of account for and has to, you know,
make sure that they shape correctly is how much room
is there in the book for the reader to participate.
One of the reasons books go completely crap is because
they're either too little room for you to participate eight

(22:00):
or there's too much room for your participation. So you
feel like you've been a band and you feel like
you don't understand the rules. You don't feel like there's
somebody there who's playing with you, you know, and somebody
just throws a balled up piece of paper to you
and say it's play versus when somebody comes and say, hey, listen,
I've known this game. It's like this, but you can
change the rules and modify the game in a way

(22:21):
that makes it pleasing and satisfying. And so I think
that that's always been my game plan. I've never felt
the need to explain Jack to most people because I
understand that most people want to collaborate. It's a matter
of being a player, being a complete spectator exactly. Let
me tell you the truth. I would argue most writers

(22:41):
want their readers on the bench. That's the truth of it.
I would argue most readers are accustomed to being on
the bench. They're not accustomed to being asked to participate
fully in a way that I think really brings out
the richness of reading. And I'm way more interested in
that than I am of any other thing. Being alive,
the feeling of being alive when you're reading it, as

(23:02):
opposed to it just being an object that you're consuming,
and that I'm a minor part of this. This has
been my problem with even the identity of being a writer.
You know, I will go to a place where people
are expecting me and they'll give applause, and I keep thinking, yeah,
I hope you're applauding yourself, because I'm just an excuse
for yall to shine it's really true. I am the

(23:25):
least of what makes a book brilliant as it should be.
It is readers that make any book brilliant, and that's
why so many books it takes a while for them
to find their readership. They've written a book that will
only respond to the future. And if you have to
actually really believe that deeply, not just as something you

(23:46):
say in an interview, not something you just trot out
because you're trying to grab some humble points. You actually
has to be an absolute operational logic. If you don't
feel that in your soul, it will never be reflected
in the books. Ever, you cannot falsify that. And it's
the same way you can't falsify sympathy that ship shows
up if you have no sympathy that shows up in

(24:08):
a book. I think that that was probably the best
thing I did during my apprenticeship as a writer, is
make that decision when I was first building the tools
to be a writer, is that I come in number three,
readers one and two, and now let's do some work.
And that helps. And that approach obviously follows from adult

(24:29):
literature to children's literature. Did you have to modify it?
Or tweak it in any way, because it does seem
that the space that you allow a kid as a
reader to play has to be a little bit different
than the space that you allow a adult to play.
It hugely. And the thing is is that you want
to create, at least this is how I figured out,
is that you want to create sort of multiple games.

(24:53):
Right that there is a very simple, straightforward Pong in
here for those of you young enough to remember Pong,
a simple video game. Him, Yeah, there's a very simple
video game in here that you can play. You can
just strap yourself into this book. You collaborate a little bit,
and you're out. But you could begin to understand that
there are multiple games happening here. The older or perhaps

(25:14):
a more sophisticator or a more interested reader can then
begin to understand that, hey, wait a minute, this book
is also playing a game with children's book where the
folks that are giving Lola the initial stories are giving
her traditional children's book literature, which is like, oh, look,

(25:35):
this is funny, this is whimsical, this is all innocent.
But then there's a second children's book that is growing
inside of this innocent children's book. You could begin to
understand that game of how this book is a fact
not only a commentary on children's book, but an operation
manual on what would be a real interesting way to

(25:55):
hack traditional children's literature. That's there for folks one to
play that game, but you don't need to. I have
to say as a you know, as a white dad
of two little white kids, having space in the book
where it was up to me as a parent because
my kids are a little you know, they're four and six,
so they're a little young. But for me myself to

(26:16):
go through that journey of discovery of who is this monster?
What was this? What was this hurricane? All these things,
I got to go along with them, as opposed to
a book being presented as a neat, little finished package
with a neat moral and a neat story and it's
complete when you close a cover. Well, one hopes these
things for me so difficult. I'm so I'm so lame

(26:39):
a writer that if I don't have I believe me,
if I don't have multiple levels in a book, it
wouldn't have been worth the amount of time that it
took me. It took me forever. So I'm always thinking,
you know, I'm like that cat who's building a restaurant
and you're like, well, it's taken me six years to
do the build out, I might as well have a bar.
I might as well have a drive who I might

(26:59):
as well have a make it yourself solid bar. You know,
by the time the process is done, I've added as
much shit as I comment station in a hot mane.
What was the impetus to write a kid's book? That
those God children? You know? I mean, the thing is
as who knows if you tell God children that you're
a writer, they're like, where's my book? Where's my booky?
You know, because they're coming home writing books for their

(27:21):
parents all day long, and so they're like, yo, where
is my book? And uh yo that that's never stopped
for me. They're the hardest, most task driving editors. God
that clamor it's like these and you're like, where's my advance?
Not even I'm like, where's my inspiration? I soccer getting inspiration?
Because Lola is such a big character in Oscar. Wow,

(27:43):
and then Lola shows up here, and because the timeline
so interwoven in this one, it does make me feel
that Lola is the same character from Oscar into Ireland
Boy I don't know if that's my own. No, it's
meant to be. It's sort of meant to be enough
strange other universe. I always think that the person who Lola,
the real Dominican person who Lola's extracted from from my life.

(28:05):
You know, my works is highly fictional, but it takes
elements from my life. When you're in a serious relationship
somebody for many many years, the possibility of children come out.
You talk about children, and you talk about what you
think they may be. Like. I always think the Lola
in Island Born is the daughter that me and this
X never had but we dreamed of having. Does she

(28:25):
know that doesn't matter? I think one of the things
that I wanted to touch on is the idea of
the diaspora and the idea of childhood trauma and kind
of societal trauma, which is basically the story of the
Vacan Republic, and how Lola deals with it. She doesn't
have any access to it right off the bat. That's
kind of like her journey is gaining some sort of

(28:46):
mitigated access to what happened. Like your god children, for instance,
they don't remember no Trieo, they don't have that in
their blood. Although as you may clear in your other work,
that's something that's generational and passed down in stick but
very concrete ways. I mean, but think about Island Born.
Here's what Lola has been living with, is that she's

(29:07):
actually been living with the victims and the refugees of
the monsters all along. Ultimately, all along these discordant notes
about the island had been present. I would not believe
that the first time that she heard something discordant about

(29:27):
the island and the history of the island was when
that barber spoke. In some ways, I think it's that
the first time she was asked to pay attention, So
first time she's focused, She's got her hands up to
her temples. She's channeling, and one listens and hears quite
different when one has intentionality. And what I think happens

(29:48):
in this book is that Lola in fact has a
grandmother and Aboela she loves to death, but is unable
to recognize fully what her grandmother or her presence is
telling her. That her grandmother is a story that she
doesn't have the key to unlock until she goes through
this journey. You can't read the grandmother's encouragement of Lola

(30:14):
in this story without realizing at the end that part
of that encouragement is the grandmother trying to become fully
present to her little granddaughter. And that's important. It's very important.
And Mr mere all big time, who I think for me,
I feel a little silly thing is like the most
haunting character in the book because it's a beautiful children's book,

(30:37):
but it is there's something so beautiful and sad about
him working on his his projects in the like the
super and I know that basement apartment. You know, I've
been in those basement apartments. And with this frame picture
of Salcedo, the town of the Resistance, I guess, and
this whole backstory and then this is what he is
in the north, and this is what he is to Lola,

(31:00):
a guy with the broom, and then she finds out
that he's much more. Yeah, I think this has support
our education for all of us. We're taught that we
should look at someone who is picking up the garbage
in this office right here and think of them as
a janitor. But that's only because we're asked to view
the world through the most savage lens. The truth of

(31:24):
it is is these folks who are picking up the
garbage around here, are like the folks that made me possible.
They viewed through a different lens, are the great heroes
of our world, the great monster slayers of our world.
And Lola, who is this wonderful family, is not even
aware of this heritage because she thinks of her grandmother

(31:45):
as just, and she thinks of Mr mir is just
the super and she doesn't understand that taken from a
different angle, an angle that isn't just imaginary, and angle
that in fact incorporates all that is hidden and all
the secrets stories, these people are titans. Normally, when celebrities
write children's books, I feel like how voice over actors

(32:06):
feel when Morgan Freeman takes all their roles. He does, Yeah,
he does, he does. But I think one of the
things that I love most about Island Born is you
deal with the same issues and with the same philosophy
of looking at people through multiple angles that you do
in your adult literature. In the Island Born in a
way that's appropriate for your kids, in the sense that

(32:26):
you're talking about trauma without traumatizing them. But you still
have that same you are who you are in your novels.
You are who you are in island born. I think
as a parent who wants to share that vision of
people being titans, even if you see them through one lens,
it's a wonderful chance. Well, you know, Ultimately, what's the
problem is that the reason why a story that is

(32:50):
passed on will leave a child feeling emotionally and psychically
impoverished is that if you deposit a story and a
child that done, that there's no place for that child
in that story. Suffering X happened, Hold that this terror
was endured? Want you hold that for a second. But

(33:12):
the thing is is that none of these stories are done.
None of these stories are really over. And I think
folks like history as this kind of contained, already judged,
prepackaged infinitude. You know that it's just it's just complete.
It's the screen. And I think that the way that
you can leave someone feeling empowered in a story is

(33:33):
to understand that this thing isn't done, This thing isn't
in a museum. There's a role for you to play,
even if it's just in the remembering and recognition, and
that's where people feel empowered. They're like, wow, I can
jump in this plane. It's just not a plane that
just gets dumped on me. And I could fly this
thing around and take it somewhere where it hasn't been before.

(33:55):
Lola takes this story of a monster. We could just
be something you just deposit as a kid, as a
kind of an ethnic or cultural or racial or political celebration.
And she's like, there's a place for me in this story.
And we see at the end, like Lola imagines in
the final pages her interaction with the monster, what would

(34:16):
she do? And I think that that's important that empowers people.
If history is just something dead that we drape you over, bleeding, rotting,
stinking skins that you have to wear every now and
then for a holiday, there's a reason why no one
wants to have anything to do with history. If for
history is something alive where you can be a hero
in it, that's quite different. There's space space, Juno, thank

(34:41):
you for taking the time to appreciate it. Thank you
so much. You know, as I'm paging through Island Born,
I realized that most of the characters, in fact, all
of the characters are of color. That's a rarity when

(35:01):
it comes to children's literature, and something when I was
reading the book to my two sons as very aware
of and it got me thinking about race, when and
how is the appropriate way to talk to children about it?
When do they become aware of race? Much of Juno's work,
especially for adults, explores these subtle gradations of race and
color which are evident in all societies. But he's talking about,

(35:23):
you know, Dominican society. So I wanted to get the
opinion of Josh Krish, our Science editor, on race and
when kids first become aware of it. And I know
you're steaming with jealousy because you are a huge Juno
Diaz fan, the biggest I had the privilege of speaking
with him. Why didn't you invite me? You always invite
me late to a small studio and they would have

(35:44):
been awkward no, when he would have felt right at
home m um. So the reason Juneau was on the
podcast is because he's Juno Dias. But he's not a father.
But he did write a kid's book which kind of
brought him here called Island Born across his ouv for
adults and children. I think one of Juno diaz His
main preoccupations is race, how it manifests and how it

(36:08):
affects everyone that discriminated against in the discriminator the way
it manifests in Island Born. His children's book is in
the diversity of characters, and it manifests beautifully. I think
that's why it resonates so widely. I can't wait to
take a look at it. We've talked before about how
to raise non racist children, how to avoid raising racist children,
definitely good, and how much of its nature versus nurture

(36:31):
can that be mitigated. I want to dig into the
science behind racism and children and how to combat it.
I have a hunch that more books like Island Born help,
that they're not just for Dominican kids, that they're not
just for people of color who are children, that they're
for all of us. Sure, actual racism we don't see

(36:55):
in very young children. They don't hate people, they don't
really hate anything, they don't necessarily have the brain power
to hate. Yet you don't see a real ethnicity bias
until around age three, and in most children that peaks
at around age eight, and then hopefully after that peak,
it kind of declines into a less racist or only
implicitly not explicitly a racist child. That's kind of the

(37:16):
progression of racism and the average white kid living in
a white neighborhood. You're saying that explicit racism peaks at
age eight, Yeah, and then after that it sinks into
implicit racism, right, which is what the average person has.
The average person has a fair amount of implicit racism.
Implicit racism doesn't mean that you would make any decision
based on your racism, or that you would exclude somebody

(37:37):
or not give them the job, but it means somewhere
in the back of your head you think that your
race is better than the other races. Most people have
that to some degree. Studies have shown that the average person,
if you really pick at their brains, has a certain
preference for their own race over other races. But we've
buckled down on that. We've put it inside ourselves and
we don't let it show out in public, mainly because
society has taught us, at least the society that we

(37:59):
live in now, has taught us that it's very, very
bad to be racist. So the average kid has no
awareness of this. At age three, four or five, six, seven, eight,
the child is overtly racist, will say things like, look, mommy,
that's a black person, and maybe treat that person differently.
They're very obvious about it. And then around age eight
or nine, society starts telling them you maybe you should

(38:21):
cool it. If you feel people are different, don't say
anything about it. And then for the average child, unless
they're being raised by like a Nazi, the average nine
year old knows better than to say racist things. To
push back a little bit. Is five year old saying,
look at that person, Daddy, he's black? Racist? Is that
just noticing difference? Isn't it somehow more insidious to teach

(38:44):
them that noticing difference is wrong? We may want to
pick a different example. It's an entirely different question. Obviously.
I was just pointing out that children tend to tend
to say what comes to mind immediately. You can make
it much more racist. Look at that dirty insert race.
And the study that I saw the N word was
what was used, is that they were psychologists who were
giving case reports of kids who used the N word

(39:06):
to describe their friends who are black. These are examples
of explicit racism. This really goes against kind of what
I would imagine. Yeah, they're a good number of kids
who display explicit racism in school, who will say racist
things to other kids, and they tend to stop doing
that one society tells them to stop. But that doesn't
mean they stop being racist. It just means they stopped

(39:27):
saying racist things. Are we talking about like cent of
three to five year old studied said some racist ship
in kindergarten or is it like did and then by
the time they were eight only died? I mean, are
we talking about the preponderance that What they'll do is
they'll collect a sample of one kids who were brought
to the principle's office for using the N word, and
then they'll study them. Oh that's terrible. It's actually really

(39:49):
useful because you want to know why they're saying it.
Are they saying it because their parents are racist? Are
they saying because they all watched the same TV show? Yeah,
but that doesn't give any indication of how widespread it is.
We don't know how many kids have explicit racism. We
know a lot more, a lot more about population level
implicit racism. Implicit racism is much more interesting to scientists.
This is children who aren't racist necessarily, certainly not in
an explicit way, but they do prefer their own race.

(40:12):
And when asked, what do you think of other races.
They don't say anything negative. But when asked would you
rather be friends with this kid or that kid, and
one kid is white and one kid is black, the
white kid will pick the white kid. That's implicit racism.
They don't say it's because of race. And if you
were to ask a ten year old, did you pick
this kid because he's white, they'd be horrified. Of course not.
I picked him because he looks friendly, which is somehow worse.

(40:33):
This is implicit racism. Infants show implicit racism. You can
call it an ethnicity preference if you like. For example,
in two thousand and eight very famous study, they took
sixty four Caucasian three month olds they certainly are not
racist at three months of age, and they showed each
child a Caucasian face alongside a second face. That second
face was either but at least an Asian or African.

(40:54):
They found that the children three month olds, they were
all white kids. That these three month olds would stare
at the Caucasian face for most the entire time, and
that their eyes never even looked at the other race face.
They weren't seen. That's right, They completely erased them. There's
a there's a degree of a racer here. What's much
more likely than that this is a racial finding is
that small children tend to like faces that they associate

(41:15):
with their parents faces. These are white kids with white parents.
That white person looked more like their parents, So they
have a preference for somebody who looks like mom and dad.
And if you're a white kid, odds are looking like
mom and dad means a white person. What's the role
of parents in trying to raise non racist children. Parents
have a very real responsibility to make sure that their
children see them doing things that demonstrate that they're not racist.

(41:39):
Which doesn't mean walking around with a t shirt that
says I'm not a racist. It means modeling the behavior.
What about a tote bag that says I'm not a
tote bag wouldn't work either. You've got to model the behavior.
One way to model such behavior in your speech is
simply to make sure that you stop using us them expressions.
Us them expressions are very harmful. Don't refer to other
races as them and your race as us. Talk about
people as being part of able community. Children sense when

(42:01):
you call somebody else them, when you other somebody in
your speech, children pick up on that. As a matter
of fact, studies have shown the children pick up on
your implicit biases all the time. Sometimes this can cause
them even to display explicit biases while are you looking
me funny? I thought it was the other way around.
It works every direction, It works every direction. There's a
prejudice scale twenty statements about other cultures that you can

(42:25):
administer to any adult, and through this prejudice scale and
how they answer these questions, you can figure out what
their levels of implicit bias and explicit bias are. Some
of these questions are like, respond to the following statement,
immigrants take our jobs strongly agree, strongly disagree. Another one
that's on there is immigrants transmit values not required in
our country strongly agree, strongly disagree. Parents who tend to

(42:46):
score particularly yeah, it's not great. Parents who tend to
score particularly high on the prejudice scale are overwhelmingly more
likely to have children who display implicit and explicit bias.
For a child, you can't give them the survey, they
won't know what to do with it. You have a
six year old, so you're six year old wouldn't know
a answer on a survey like this but they did
take a group of six year olds whose parents had
answered this survey, and they showed them pictures of six

(43:09):
different kids from different ethnic groups and ask them who
would you like to go on a play date on
or if you could only be one of these kids,
which one of these kids would you be? And children
who chose their own race consistently across all of these
experiments invariably had parents who scored poorly on the prejudice scale.
What this tells us, in less scientific terms, is that
if you are biased deep down and if you feel

(43:29):
a certain way about other people, your children are going
to pick up on it. And they're not just going
to pick up on it in an implicit way that
they're going to harbor negative thoughts about other races. They
might even make decisions about other races based on the
implicit behavior that you have. You're walking around the house
using us them statements, making sure to only watch TV
shows that have actors that are your race. Well, the

(43:51):
actor thing. I think is interesting because you can very
easily default into only watching a non diverse television show
reading books with white kids as a characters like that's
part of the system which if I'm not wrong. Kids
don't pick up on whether it's explicit or explicit, whether
you're choosing a television show because it's only white kids,

(44:11):
or choosing a television show and it only has white characters, right.
They digest that in the same way, Which is why
a book like this, why having diverse characters and having
diversity being part of the fabric of life seems so
important as a parent, and why it's just as important
to work at it. For me, it needs to be
a conscious decision because such is the state of the

(44:32):
world that the default isn't that. Yeah, it's it's a
shame that it has to be conscious. But your children
if you want, if you want a Chilles to grow
up not to be racist, he has to see that
Dad has friends of different races, that Dad watches shows
that have black people in them as the stars, reads
him books that have yeah, white kids, but also kids
from every other race, that have a good ethnic breakdown

(44:55):
of different groups, and that Dad enjoys foods from different
cultures and doesn't insult as cultures while he's eating their foods.
That happens. Oh yeah, I had a grandfather who had
some very choice words to describe ethnic dishes, which is
still ordered right, and it definitely didn't do wonders to
my implicit racism. But we have to model this behavior
at home. Say I'm not comfortable having that conversation with Achilles.

(45:18):
To be honest, I don't think that if I sat
him down and I was like, this is what racism is,
don't be it, don't be a racist, that would not
be helpful for him. No one studies suggest you're right,
it would not be helpful. How do I approach the
subject needs to be dialogue and needs to be interactive
dialogue almost almost initiated by Achilles. So how do you

(45:39):
make Achilles start talking about race? It's probably not something
that he's thinking about right now. And the answer is
you pick something going on in the news, or pick
something that he's seeing on TV or Diaz book that's
in front of him, and ask him to basic questions,
what do you think about what is happening and how
does it make you feel? That's what do you think
about what's happened? And how does it make you feel?

(46:02):
Those two questions are relatively open ended. They prompt the
child to start talking about what's happening in the scene.
So in the book, for example, talking about what's happening
on the page. Now you have an engaged reader, which
is never a bad thing, and how it makes you feel.
You're gonna find that those feelings frequently end up touching
on something that can launch you into a discussion about race.
For example, India's book The Dictator Trujillo, who was a

(46:24):
dictator who terrorized the Dominican Republic, is depicted in the
book as a black monster. If you were to stop
at that page with Achilles and say, you see, this
black monster symbolizes a very bad person who hurt a
lot of people in a certain country. What do you
think about what's happening on this page and how does
it make you feel to think that these people were
hurt by this black monster? Why do you keep on
emphasizing the black part of it because it's a black monster.

(46:47):
I was just describing it. It's a monster a bat
Oh that helps more. And you stop right there and
you ask Achilles, what do you think about what's happening.
He's probably gonna give you a pretty incisive answer. It
looks like a monster's terror rising children in sights of Achilles,
And how does that make you feel And if Achilles
says something like, I don't know, these kids don't look

(47:08):
like me. I guess that couldn't happen to me, that's
a great place to launch into a discussion about how
there's a globalism and an idea this could happen to anybody.
And if Achilles says this looks like it's happening in
an island somewhere, maybe it doesn't affect people living in cities,
that might be a great time to explain to Achilles
that people who live on islands and people live in
cities both have monsters they have to deal with. It's

(47:29):
a launching point for a discussion that Achilles can initiate
using what's happening on the page. It seems like it's
a dad. It's like, I want to be able to
have conversations about race and what I want to be
able to have Achilles acknowledge and appreciate different But I
do also often feel it's difficult to have a conversation saying, well,

(47:50):
this person is black, or this person's brown, or this
person is white and not feel nervous about what you're
inculcating in them by noticing and pointing out that difference.
Based on my own parenting, I think that if you
highlight differences and you honestly don't feel any implicit bias
in those differences, it's not going to translate that way.

(48:11):
The studies suggest that a parent that doesn't have implicit
bias doesn't transmit it. There's no fear of you transmitting
racism if you've gotten it out of your system. How
many of us have really gotten very few? But you know,
that's a lifelong pursuit to truly understand that all people
are equal and need to be treated equally, but also
that they are essentially equal. All parenting goes back to
know thyself, Yeah, and and improve thyself, which is so

(48:34):
much harder. Josh thank you for stopping by. Thanks that's
it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Fatherly Podcast.
I'm your host, Joshua david Stein. Today's episode was executive

(48:54):
produced by Sandy Smallens and engineered by Dave Savage. Theme
music is by Kyle Forster with little help from my son.
I'll be here in stime. If you enjoyed the podcast,
give us a high five rating and subscribe on iHeart
Radio or wherever you get your podcasts. That's it for me,
the kids. You got anything to say? Um, what do what?

(49:16):
Cloud eat nuts