This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Debra Triesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Juno Diaz read his story,

The Ghosts of Gloria Lara, from the November 6, 2023 issue of the magazine.

Diaz is the author of the story collection Stround, and this is how you lose her,

and the novel The Brief Wanderer's Life of Oscar Wow,

for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2008.

Now here's Juno Diaz.

The Ghosts of Gloria Lara.

Before that year, I knew nothing about Colombia, nothing real.

I was eleven, and two focused on the Dominican Republic I'd left behind,

and on my own immigrant bullshit to worry about anywhere else.

If I'd had my way, I wouldn't ever have thought about the DR,

but in my household there was no escaping it.

Those were the early years of our immigration,

when my mother still kept up with the news back home.

Every morning without fail, before I even had a chance to brush my teeth,

she had me tune my father's beloved radio to the Spanish stations,

and because I was the curious kid I was, I listened,

and because I couldn't help myself, I learned.

Maybe it was the stations we were tuning into,

but they made it sound like the DR was on a rocket to hell.

...