What's the book about? Junot Díaz's debut collection of short stories is a familiar promenade through South Jersey and DR, unrequited love and unencumbered machismo. Which is to say, the things that propelled Díaz, deservingly, into the literary stratosphere. Readers familiar with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao will recognize Yúnior, but the thing that everyone can recognize is Díaz's incredible voice. When you laugh with his writing — and there are many, many laughs in Drown — you're doing it paired with an incredible tenderness for his characters and their experiences.

Why should you read it? I remember the first time I read Junot Díaz. I'm not really sure I remember reading anything quite that clearly. To see italicized words in Spanish — puta, pendejo, sucia — in the New Yorker made me feel like there was a place for young people of color in the monocle-gazing land of Eustace Tilley. Drown had this effect on me, too, where I realized there was a way to talk about the shame and disenfranchisement of people of color while also making people laugh. And I laughed, because I loved the thought of all these bespectacled fancy people nursing their afternoon gin and tonics looking up what a sucia is. Junot Díaz changed the way I thought about writing.

—Julia Furlan