The Impossible Is Indeed Possible

Author Junot Diaz remembers a family member of his in the Dominican Republic who was believed to be a medium that would “become possessed” whenever she heard “certain kinds of music or certain kinds of drums.” In contrast to the rationalism that came to pervade most of Western culture, this “new world cosmology”–as he calls it–which melded Christianity with African and Caribbean indigenous paganism, recognized the transcendent element within everyday experiences ranging from music and the weather to the body and sex.