Analysis Of Drown By Junot Diaz

“Negocios”, a story from Junot Díaz’s drown, provides an indepth look into the life of an immigrant from the Dominican Republic trying to make a life for him and his family in the United States. Ramon is constantly faced with difficult challenges but he shows an amazing amount of determination to achieve his goal of providing his family with a better life.

Drown; a compilation of short stories, by Junot Diaz portrays the integration of fiction and truth. Yunior, narrator, as he tells his stories, he exaggerates and jumps from one period of his life to another. The characters of the story can relate to many young adults. Their experiences and the journeys of their lives are what most Hispanic teenagers go through. The 10 different stories explain the different themes shown throughout the book. The Hispanic community faces many problems and Diaz states a couple of them; gender immigration, violence, drugs, family, cultural identity, and the Latin experience.

It is not just the language of the Dominican culture that we find characters struggling to hold onto in Díaz’s Drown. We also find that the characters walk a fine line of defining themselves as newly Dominican American, and it seems they feel pressured to leave behind their old ways and traditions to join their new society. In the short story “Fiesta, 1980,” we find many examples of the family being torn between their Dominican customs and assimilating to their new American life. This story begins with the explanation of Papi’s most prized possession: a brand-new, lime-green, Volkswagen van. Much to Yunior’s chagrin (due to the fact that he gets sick every time he rides in the vehicle), this van means a lot to Papi, because to him, it represents an American family. According to John Riofrio (2008), “it[the van] is the embracing of the American way which has reenabled Papi’s masculinity,” (p. 33). After arriving at their Tia and Tio’s home for the party, Yunior sneers at his relatives’ apartment stating, “the place had been furnished in Contemporary Dominican Tacky” (p. 32). It seems as though Yunior, after only a short period in America, is already feeling embarrassed by his culture’s traditions. This chapter of the book also discusses the betrayal of Yunior’s father to his family, by having an affair with a Puerto Rican woman, whom

One of Díaz’s greatest gifts in storytelling is the intimacy of his voice through the use of second-person point of view. Throughout the entire story, the reader is placed in the position of Yunior. “You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda.” (p. 2) But even though second-person point of view is usually used to include readers of all types and all races, in this story, it is clear that the “you” that Díaz uses does not encompass all readers. This is apparent as soon as page two of the story when Yunior (Díaz) writes, “For some Negroes that wouldn’t mean shit. But you ain’t that kind of Negro.” Through this sentence, it is clear that the “you” refers to a person of color. Yunior is openly angry and while most of his ire is directed at the women in his life and his failing body, as he gets more and more depressed, some of it starts to get directed at white people as well. White people scream at him at traffic lights, white kids throw soda cans at him, drunk white guys try to pick fights with him, and even though he’s a tenured professor, he is unable to step

The novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, illustrates these challenges. Throughout the novel, we see how different aspects of culture shock impact the Garcia family. In this essay I will discuss how particular events change each family member’s Dominican cultural values and identity.

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

In All American Girl, Alvarez expresses her definition of a native in America, “I wanted stockings make up, store bought clothes; I wanted to look like an american girl,” (Line 1-2). This is saying that she wants to fit in and be normal because she is unhappy with her life. This important because these show Alvarez is very straight-forward when she writs, not beating around the bush. On this subject, in Exile, the author provides her feelings of when they just found out about their escape, “My sisters crying when we turned before the family beach house,” (Line 30-31) . This is showing the emotion of the car ride to the terminal. This is vital to expose the author’s writing style because she is very serious about her writing especially on the theme of immigration. Even though imagery is conveyed in her writing, it isn’t enough to deduce her writing

The author pleads to the political powers to give countries their fair chance and govern their own countries. “Lower yourselves to the unfortunate and raise them up in your arms…let the country’s natural blood surge and throb through its veins,” (Martí 287). The author asks the people in a higher social positon to be an even level of humanity and celebrate a triumph rather than subject Latin American countries under submission. Martí inquires once again freedom for nations that have been under a certain sovereign power. On a rhetorical level, he is also canvasing for equality through the learning of native languages and culture once again. Writer Carlos Urzaiz proclaims that Martí had centered his writings, “concerned with American indigenous populations, emphasizes their capacity to animate their respective cul-tures and associates the restoration of their respective soul— “identity” in modern terms.” Conserving primitive civilizations had become important to Martí and saw the seriousness of bringing back the abandoned cultures back to the surface as revolutions throughout Latin America were

He starts of the story with the setting of his house and how he is preparing for his first date to arrive. He is doing extraordinary preparations to impress the girl he is currently dating. As he is explaining how to prepare for the date he gives simple suggestions such as “If she’s an outsider her father will be bringing her, maybe her mother” (page 178). This is stating that the girl will not be urban or Hispanic since she is considered an outsider. He is also giving a hint that he has to act differently because the young lady is from a different cultural background. Diaz also gives the acquisition in his quote “If she’s a whitegirl you know you’ll at least get a hand job” (page 178). Which implies that every white girl gives hand job which is a simple stereotype that Diaz might have heard from his friends or believing this from an experience he has

Drown; a compilation of short stories, by Junot Diaz portrays the integration of fiction and truth. Yunior, narrator, as he tells his stories, he exaggerates and jumps from one period of his life to another. The characters of the story can relate to many young adults. Their experiences and the journeys of their lives are what most Hispanic teenagers go through. The 10 different stories explain the different themes shown throughout the book. The Hispanic community faces many problems and Diaz states a couple of them; gender immigration, violence, drugs, family, cultural identity, and the Latin experience.

Amy Tan and Junot Diaz on their stories they talked about they don’t speak their languages. Both of them find it difficult to speak different languages like Junot Diaz he went Santo Domingo for a vacation with his wife and it’s been twenty years that he has been over and people over there looking at him cause he doesn’t look Dominican and he barely speaks Spanish. For Amy tan she talked about how her mother was a stockbroker in New York and the people she work with doesn’t understand her English and she is Chinese. People this world will look at different cause of your Ethnicity and if you don’t speak their language they will treat wrong.

The first issue that many Latino author’s address is the problems in many Latin American countries. In Esperanza Rising Esperanza’s family faces the backlash of the Mexican revolution. Esperanza’s family has land in Mexico which makes them a target for many unhappy citizens in Mexico. Esperanza’s mother has to explain to her that, "the wealthy still own most of the land while some of the poor have not even a garden plot. There are cattle grazing on the big ranches, yet some peasants are forced to eat cats" (Ryan, 25). Eventually Esperanza’s father is murdered by bandit’s and they are forced to leave the dangerous country. Mexico is not the only place with major issues. Young Adult literature often reaches into the historical hardships of other Latin countries, such as the dictators of the Dominican Republican in Julia Alvarez’s novel Before We Were Free. Alvarez talks about the distrust of the police, stating “Back home, [her father] had been tailed by the secret police for months and the family had only narrowly escaped capture their last day on the Island” (Alvarez 233). Young Adult literature reflects this often as a background story, forcing the protagonists into the environment they are in. As well, it frames the families’ mindset and the hardships many have faced before

Growing up poor in the Dominican Republic strongly influenced the choices Yunior makes later in his life. In “Aguantando” Yunior recalls about how poverty was a part of his life. Díaz writes, “We were poor. The only way we could have been

Every immigrant has a personal story, pains and joys, fears and victories, and Junot Díaz portrays much of his own story of immigrant life in “Drown”, a collection of 10 short stories. In each of his stories Diaz uses a first-person narrator who is observing others to speak on issues in the Hispanic community. Each story is related, but is a separate picture, each with its own title. The novel does not follow a traditional story arc but rather each story captures a moment in time. Diaz tells of the barrios of the Dominican Republic and the struggling urban communities of New Jersey.

Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is still our reality. While discussing the rhetorical analysis of this essay I had an epiphany. The purpose of this essay is what troubled me most. Was she just writing to write or was she just a creative writer? After one hour of discussion it hit me, the feelings that me and my class mates where encountering was it. Nearly all of us came into the discussion annoyed and impatient. We were unwilling to analyze the essay because we where enraged by the fact that it was not completely in English. All but a few who understood Spanish where irritated because to the paper was not converted to what we wanted it to be. How dare she write a paper and expect us to read in when it isn’t in perfect complete English. I then discovered that all of our anger and annoyances were her point or purpose. She wanted to make us feel how she felt. Every day she was criticized on how she spoke and wrote. One side wanted only English while the other only wanted Spanish. When in reality she knew both therefore wanted to use both intermittently. Every time she was corrected she was annoyed and discourage. As each and every one of us read the paper we were all annoyed by the fact that it wasn’t in the language we wanted. We thought that because