SeeToSee

Hi Junot, thanks for doing this.

I’ve been troubling myself lately about the character of Pura. On the one hand, she’s so ruthless and conniving, that it’s almost easy to forget that the real “monster” is Rafa. On the other, as "campesina," her upbringing makes Yunior's look glamorous, and maybe ruthless was the only way for her to eke out a life. As readers, how do we balance our desire to pass judgment on characters with our obligation to take a full view of what they're up against?

(Maybe the same concern arises with Yunior: I find my students often want to package him as a jerk, while I'm trying to push them to consider his models for masculinity, his status as outsider, etc. But after a certain number of stories, don't we all eventually want to take him to task for his repeated falls?)

In what ways is it important to your idea of Yunior's character that he be considered our writer as well as our narrator? On the one hand it shows him responsibly engaged with history, with his friends, and with his own growth. On the other, as you (or he) point out in Wao, the writer and the dictator perform similar roles, and as readers, we might be wary of Y.'s seductive perspective. ("I'm not a bad guy...")