Introduction & Overview of The Sun, the Moon, the Stars by Junot Díaz

The Sun, the Moon, the Stars Introduction

The story came about after Díaz spent a summer working as an interpreter for a U.S.-sponsored dentistry mission in Santo Domingo. The job gave Díaz an opportunity to visit his native Dominican Republic and experience it again from the perspective of someone who has lived for years in the United States. According to Díaz in the "Contributors' Notes" in The Best American Short Stories: 1999, that summer they "pulled . . . five thousand teeth on the trip and . . . rubbed shoulders with many of the country's elite," a contrast Díaz sought to capture in a story. After a year of revising the story, Díaz realized that he should delete all references to dentistry and focus more on the dissolution of the relationship between his two main characters. "Once I got that insight," says Díaz, "I finished the story in a single day, the culmination of sixteen months...
(read more)