52 Latino Celebs Whose Parents are Immigrants

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Junot Díaz, 44

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz, who was born in the Dominican Republic, spent most of his early years living with his madre and abuelitos in Santo Domingo while his father worked in the U.S. In 1974, the author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao immigrated to Middlesex County, New Jersey, to stay with his father. Despite an avid interest in reading books as child, he didn’t begin writing until he was much older, after his brother was diagnosed with Leukemia. “A part of the way I stayed connected to my brother was writing these enormous, ridiculous letters about what was going on about our lives, about the neighborhood, and in some ways my complete love of reading had prepared me for the moment that my brother’s illness provided, which was an excuse to now participate in the form I loved so much,” said Díaz in an interview with The Harvard Advocate. “So that’s how I started actually, writing letters to someone in a hospital.”