This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

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

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month we're going to hear seven by Edweach Dantacat, which was published in The New Yorker in October of 2001.

He charged at her and wrapped both of his arms around her.

And as he held her, she felt her feet leave the ground.

It was when he put her back down that she finally believed that she was somewhere else on another soil in another country.

The story was chosen by Juno Diaz, who is the author of Two Story Collections and the novel The Brief Wanderous Life of Oscar Wow, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

Hi Juno. How's it going Debra?

Well, you know, today is January 20th and we've just seen Trump be sworn in, so we're in a new era.

We certainly are. From my point of view, a rather dark one, but I'm sure you know.

Yeah, yeah. A fitting era to read the story that you've chosen today, which is seven by Edweach Dantacat.

And the last time that you were on the podcast, you read another story by Edweach called Waterchild, which was published in the magazine a year earlier.

Why, why two seven for today?

Well, I've spent the last few years as I've spent probably my entire adult life meditating on immigration and on immigrant communities, most specifically that generation that comes before the adult generation, as much as I've thought about my own immigration as a child.

And certainly, you know, our national politics have been all about the immigrant as a menacing and dangerous figure for the last few years.

And one of the one of the antidotes for that kind of xenophobia have been writers like Edweach Dantacat.

And certainly, I've kept it weech close these last few years, and necessarily so.

These have been very trying times for those of us who are interested in the future and the rights of immigrants and what it reads, writes about, and how she writes about it.

I've given me a lot of solace and a lot of inspiration and have added to my courage.

And Edweach are good friends and you were actually born less than a month apart on the same island, though not in the same country.

Has her writing meant something to you as a writer? You have very different styles, but often subjects that overlap.

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