National Dominican Student Conference~ Brown University

For the past three years I have attended this conference and I always leave feeling completely inspired and empowered. This year I am incredibly excited to be speaking at the Dominican Conference at Brown University in Providence, RI.

What I love about this conference... what makes this one stand out for me is that it truly highlights the academic success of Dominican students here in the United States. This is such a high honor for me.

Side note: Providence, Rhode Island holds a special place in my heart because its where by daughter was a little girl being raised just up the street from Brown University and is the place where the beginning of my memoir, "Finding Your Force a Journey to Love" takes place.

Join us for the...

6th Annual National Dominican Student Conference

Brown University - April 6 - 8, 2012

Each year, NDSC strives to bring you the highest quality in educational and empowering workshops, prominent and inspirational speakers, culturally influential movie screenings, art exhibitions, networking events, and parties – all of which serve to educate, uplift, and unite the Dominican college student community.

Junot Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best American Short Stories (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), in Pushcart Prize XXII and in The O'Henry Prize Stories 2009. He has received a Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, the 2002 Pen/Malamud Award, the 2003 US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge (1948) and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I will be speaking on a panel titled: Dios, Patria, Libertad: Communities Divided

The force of the religious community in the Dominican Republic has had a strong impact on the nation’s life and identity. The common expectations, teachings, and practices of popular religious groups have been important to Dominican development at home and abroad. At the root of this religious unity lies a strong lack of acceptance for images that differ from traditional gender roles. LGBTQ life is rarely, if ever, discussed in a religious context. As in many Latin American countries, homophobia and hyper-masculinity remain pervasive throughout much of the Dominican Republic.To introduce this workshop a series of images and text will be shown to participants and later this will transition to a personal and confidential group discussion in order to make us cognizant of the issues faced by Dominicans who are members of the LGBTQ community.

REGISTER FOR CONFERENCE HERE ~ NDSC