Each Short Chapter Story Written By Junot Diaz Presents

     As a young child, Rodriguez finds comfort and safety in his noisy home full of Spanish sounds. Spanish, is his family's' intimate language that comforts Rodriguez by surrounding him in a web built by the family love and security which is conveyed using

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

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

By having words the reader’s imagination is forced to be limited and they interpret the image on the surface rather than letting the image have more conceptual space around it. Also, by not using words, Tan demonstrates the confusion an immigrant might feel upon arrival in a new country where the language is unknown.

Analyzing a symbol as a literary convention used by author, Junot Díaz makes a way to identify the purpose of the device. In his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), the mechanism is used to develop an explicit character and point of view. The symbol is a sensory image that holds rich implication that is either a narrow or broad. Occasionally the reader is cast off by the author with an unknown meaning of the symbol hence is forced to create his own interpretation. The latter principle is intentionally carried out by the author as a literary hook to draw the attention of his audience to keep reading. Moreover, the author may also use in combination with the hook the method of utilizing pathos as a way of arousing the

Anazaldua opens the story with an anecdote where she had been to the dentist earlier in her life and her tongue was moving about in her mouth at the dentist tries to operate on her roots. The dentist comments on how fidgety Anzaldua's tongue is and how they will have to “tame” it in order to continue with the dental work. This little piece of background set up the title, theme and the main points of the novel. Shortly after the dentist anecdote, she opens another memory of when she was younger and playing at recess. Anazaldua had been caught speaking Spanish instead of English at the American school and received a punishment for not complying to the preferred language spoken at school. Then, Anazaldua recalls the conversation she and her mother had after the incident. The first bit of Spanish is released in dialogue and the audience is told by Anzaldua's

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the reader gets a sense of what the expectations are of Dominican men and women. Junot Díaz uses Oscar in contrast to the other male characters to present the expectations of the Dominican male. On the other hand, Díaz presents the women in the text, especially Belicia, La Inca, Lola, and Jenni, as strong characters in their own rights, but the male characters, with the exception of Oscar, have a desire to display their masculinity to maintain power over these women. It would be unfair to say that the women bring the abuse unto themselves, but rather it is their culture that makes the abuse acceptable and almost to a certain extent—expected.

An example of when Díaz uses his style of language to illustrate setting is when he describes Aurora’s messy living arrangements with druggies; Diaz placed great emphasis on common

To be defined as autoethnographic, the speaker also includes and embraces the stereotypes that are typical for his or her culture. “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is an autoethnographic text. From the beginning of the novel many Spanish words are incorporated into the text. “Que muchacha tan fea, she said in disgust, splashing the rest of coffee in the sink. Fea’s become my new name” (Diaz 55). As it can be seen from the passage, Diaz provides no background or explanation of the Spanish words he uses, only context clues. He does this to submerge the reader in the story. Using only the background of the sentence, the reader must think and assume what the words mean. In an autoethnographic sense, Diaz is explaining the Dominican Culture from his perspective. When using this method in novels the author teaches about culture from the way the culture works. Hence why he uses Spanish words with no explanation because a Dominican would not stop the middle of his or her sentence to explain the word he or she just used. This is an excellent method of really getting the reader involved and understanding.

The work of Junot Diaz is powerfully charged, as Diaz consistently slips impactful social messages into every paragraph. Diaz himself is an immigrant to America, and personifies his pains in his literary works. “How to Date a Brown Girl” is a short story written by Diaz, with a young Dominican immigrant named Yunior as its main character. The struggles of immigrants in America have long been an issue, and Diaz masterfully blends the struggles of fitting in as an immigrant with the struggles of growing up, as “How to Date a Brown Girl” is filled with connections to larger social issues, if you’re looking closely enough. The two main social issues in “How to Date a Brown Girl” are the struggles of being an immigrant, and the pains of growing up and learning that life isn’t always easy. Immigrants in America go through a variety of issues, such as being treated differently than others, despite years of effort by social activists; constantly feeling out of place in a country that’s not their home; and almost always having to start at the bottom of the economic chain, which only furthers the degradation of the social image of immigrants. Growing up is a process that every person has to go through, and its issues are well-documented but grossly misrepresented. Finding yourself is the most difficult thing some people will do, and its difficulty should be appreciated. Yunior, the main character of “How to Date a Brown Girl”, is in a country that’s not his home, and is going through

In Drown, a collection of short stories, author Junot Diaz presents readers with an impoverished group of characters through harsh, but vivid language. Through the voice of Yunior, the narrator throughout the majority of the stories, Diaz places the blame for Yunior’s negativity and rebellious nature on the disappointment caused by his father and the childhood illusion of America. Diaz, through language and symbolism, forces readers into an emotional bond with Yunior while exposing the illusory nature of the American dream. Although intertwined with each story, “Fiesta, 1980” allows for a more concise discussion of Diaz’s purpose. Diaz’s language, even at first glance, appears very different from conventional authors:Mami’s younger

Many people, especially women with no Latin background who read Diaz’s work might think that Diaz is an antifeminist because of the way he objectifies women in his novels. Mainly on his novel This is how you lose her. Women are constantly objectified as sexual objects, for example, in his the short story “ Nilda” he describes Nilda his brother 's girlfriend as, “ She was a Dominican , from here, and had super-long hair like those Pentecostal girls, and a chest you wouldn’t believe.” The way he describes Nilda is very sexist, but as the story progresses the reader can tell that since the beginning of the story this girl had no future. A person with a Latin background can interpret this part of the story as Diaz’s exposing Machismo. For example, Nilda being objectified as a sexual object plays a huge part in what women in a Latin community deal with everyday. Mostly because machismo in most Latin countries is perceived as part of the norm. Oftentimes, women are treated as secondary class citizens with no voice. Diaz does a great job exposing machismo in his stories. By exposing machismo in his stories Diaz is revealing the unfairness of what is means to be a woman form a

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

Oscar is not the typical Dominican man that his family expects him to be. He is considered to be a nerd which leads to the lack of romance in his adolescence and adulthood. In an article by Joori Joyce Lee it says: “Growing up as a ghetto nerd, or "a smart kid in a poor-ass community," Diaz felt like a mutant because he found himself to be an outsider in both the Dominican subculture and mainstream white American society.” (Lee, pg 23). Oscar could never really fit in with his peers or even with Dominicans, he is always considered an outsider to them. “Everybody noticed his lack of game and because they were Dominican everybody talked about it.” (Diaz, pg. 24). His own family recognizes his lack of masculinity that a Dominican man should have. Even Oscar’s sister Lola encourages him to lose weight and to become more masculine in order to get a girlfriend. His uncle Rudolfo is a prime example of what society expects every

In order to analyze the story it would help to have a guide on what is going to be explained in this paper. The first part of the paper talks about themes, some of these themes can be easily over looked since there is layer upon layers. The second part, will explain the use of tone that helps sets the stage, and the mood of the whole story. The use of imagery is present as well, for example the use of words like dry and wet, can be found when