When it comes to reality -- life off of the page -- the MIT professor, Pulitzer Prize winner and compulsive reader Junot Díaz still flourishes. Díaz recently shared his thoughts on immigration, activism, advocacy and cultural identity in an email interview with Latin Post; the author's answers are as bold and astounding as one might expect from the frank novelist.

"I'm an activist before I'm a writer. That's about as much as I can say without sounding ridiculous," said Díaz, who's been extremely vocal about the "sentencia" and stateless Haitians in the Dominican Republic.

Comparing the DR's "sentencia" to the immigration situation in the United States today, he responded, "It's a lot worse. The Republicans and their conservative Democratic allies have done everything possible to demonize immigrant communities, but they haven't tried to denationalize them -- yet. But, we're in a hideous anti-immigrant moment in our global culture and unless we keep fighting, someone will try to pull something like this in the US."

"And, the sad part is... how many people, themselves the children of immigrants, would support this inhumanity. Which is why we got to keep struggling. Everything in our mainstream political system is about fear, about making you less human. For me, that's what the real fight is about -- keeping our humanity in the face of demonic forces which wish to reduce us to heartless soul-less market automatons."

Díaz's assertions ring with truth, as immigration has become less about the people who will be affected by it and more about the people governing it. Despite the fact women are fasting in an effort to have their love ones released from jail, and despite the fact that more immigrant families are losing heads of households, more than ever before in history, immigration continues to be about the GOP, the House of Representatives, President Obama, The White House, the next presidential election, Gov. Rick Perry, House Speaker John Boehner, and everyone except the 11.7 million who are undocumented, living in the United States, and forced to live in fear of deportation. They are rarely the focus in articles that speak seriously on the subject of deportation and immigration, unless "Latino voting power" is being discussed.

"It f*cking sucks. But there's always room to fight these types of hateful politics. Obama, alas, has been no help at all. The Republicans should give him an award for his shameful deportation rates. With Democrats like these who needs Republicans?" said Díaz, who once published an essay in The New Yorker, called "One Year: Storyteller-in-Chief," which critiqued the presidency of Barack Obama.

Honest to a fault, Díaz has a great deal to share on not only politics, but attitudes, as they pertain to language, Latinos and culture.

Díaz's collection of works offer Spanish and English in variations: the utilization of streetwise American-English studded with Spanish slang with a glossary in the rear of the book for reference; Spanish "unglossed," where dedicated readers (who are not hispanophones) are tasked with using context clues or a Spanish/English dictionary; and Spanish used in a way to compel readers to use their intuition and understanding of character to create connections between the two languages, the narrator's bilingual integrity easing the process. Díaz's functional use of bilingualism in the text derives from a place of authenticity and hails from a universe where Spanglish is choice communication.

"[I'm] not so much a fan, as a product of [bilingualism]; in my opinion, bilingualism is not simply a fact on the ground in so many of our communities, it's a condition our nation should be aspiring to," said Díaz, who is the honorary chairman of the DREAM Project, a non-profit education involvement program in the Dominican Republic. "It's about more than books; it's about education and the ability to operate at a hemispheric level. The only reason everyone in our country isn't bilingual is because we have a retrograde political culture that tries to keep education to as minimal a level as possible."

"Spanish is not going away any time soon, not in this country or in this hemisphere, but that doesn't mean everyone understands its importance. I know I didn't while growing up. In my younger, self-hating days, I thought of Spanish as an impediment, as something that might hold me back from the Golden Road to Assimilation. This was the script my parents and my teachers sold to me; and not understanding anything else, I bought it. Only later did I realize what I was losing and how important it is to be able to communicate with your community, to build solidarities, to understand oneself," said Díaz. "I had to re-learn Spanish and mine is still not perfect. But, hey, one needs to try and leave perfection to the Gods. These days there are more resources and more positive views of Spanish, but we still live in a country which maligns all things Latino and so one can understand why our community doesn't always treat our Spanish language like the treasure it is."

"We need to support all our languages but we must all be compassionate -- not everyone has the same cultural resources and wherewithal at their disposal. Not everyone has a choice, you know. And to be completely clear: I don't think one needs to be fluent in Spanish to be Dominican or to be fluent in English to be an American. That's not the way the world works," said Díaz.

When asked about complexion and skin color identity in the Dominican community, Díaz offered a candid response, which reflects the sentiments of many Latinos living through the experience.

"I'm certainly a Dominican of African descent. And, is racism a problem within and without the Dominican community? You better believe it. But, look we all have our oppressions and we also all have our privileges. For me, it's confronting them both that makes for a real sense of the world and of oneself. Being of color and an immigrant and broke was no advantage, but being a boy and straight and conventionally-abled sure were," Díaz said, who once remarked that masculine privilege was something that was afforded due to his father, brother and his "own willingness to fight or my own inability to fit into any category easily," those things being the differentiating factors that kept him from becoming Oscar.

"As for connecting with lighter skinned Latinos," Díaz continued. "I had all colors in my family, including white and black (as defined in an US context.) We were all more than our complexions. I had terrible negro-phobic dark-skinned relatives and super-progressive racially positive light-skinned relatives. I guess I try to remember that all this stuff is super complex and one person's light-skinned is another person's darkness, but that white supremacy stands with its whip over us all."

Díaz's familiarity with all subjects and his ability to browse context like an index makes him well-versed in many subjects, including history, fantasy, politics and philosophy, evident in his ability to change course or topic, weave conversations, and offer informed thoughts and conscious rebuttals.

He is best known for his books The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Drown, and This Is How You Lose Her, which have all earned great acclaim. He's been featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. Díaz currently lives in New York City and is a creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.