Junot Díaz Drown a Struggle for Cultural Identity

Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated with his family to New Jersey, where a collection of his short stories are based from. Out of that collection is a short story “Fiesta, 1980”, which was featured in The Best American Short Stories, 1997. This story is told from the perspective of an adolescent boy, who lives in the Bronx of northern New Jersey with his family. He is having trouble understanding why things are the way they are in his family. Diaz shows Yunior’s character through his cultures, his interaction with his family, and his bitterness toward his father.

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.

One of the main sources of tension in How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, written by Julia Alvarez, are the sisters search for a personal identity among contrasting cultures. Many of the characters felt pressure from two sources, the patriarchal culture that promotes traditional gender roles and society of nineteen-sixties and seventies America. Dominican tradition heavily enforces the patriarchal family and leaves little room for female empowerment or individuality, whereas in the United States, the sixties and seventies were times of increasingly liberal views and a rise in feminist ideals. This conflict shaped the identities of the characters in Alvarez’s novel and often tore the characters apart for one another.

Within the works of “Fiesta, 1980” it takes us in the lives of a Latin American family. We are described a traditional style Latino family were there is a dominate father figure, a submissive mother, and obedient children more or less. There are two boys the eldest Rafa and the youngest Yunior and their younger sister Madai. During the transgression of the story it is conveyed through the eyes of Yunior. And like any typical family it has its own story to tell.

Stereotypes are dangerous weapons in our society. “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” is a short essay in which the award winning poet and professor of English, Judith Ortiz Cofer, wishes to inform and persuade the audience that labels and stereotypes can be humiliating and hurtful. The author targets the general public, anyone that doesn’t understand that putting someone in a box because of a stereotype is wrong. Cofer starts out the essay by telling the reader a story with a drunk man who re-enacted “Maria” from the West Side Story, and how angry that made her feel. She continues by explaining how she grew up in the United States being a Puerto Rican girl trying to fit in, but always being labeled as an island girl. Cofer carries on by explaining why Latin people get dressed and act a certain way. Then she recalls some more stereotypical incidents.

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.

The Europeans who claimed what was to become America chose to integrate the land's present inhabitants and future immigrants in order to become the dominating race and, consequently, made other cultures feel inferior to their own. The Angel family, Mexican-Indian immigrants and the subject of Arturo Islas' Migrant Souls, becomes victim to the Americans' forceful demands for conformity. While Sancho, the father, never complains about assimilation, yet never becomes fully "assimilated," his wife, Eduviges, strives to be a part of the American culture. These conflicting reactions and the existing prejudice in the community leave their daughter, Josie, uncertain of her true identity.

In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, cultural displacement has a lasting effect on the Garcia family, particularly the Garcia daughters. Their acculturation to American life sparks an identity crisis in the face of racism, language, and relationships. This struggle is exemplified through Yolanda. Yolanda’s journey is an impassioned search for belonging – for immersion in her Dominican heritage, or in the surrogacy of America. In trying to forge her identity, however, she discovers that she is an amalgam of both cultures and never fully assimilates into one.

After reading just the first few pages of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, the language in the novel can be described as extremely unique and even special. Thus far our group has read 20 pages of the novel, and we have had to adapt to the many Spanish references that our incorporated into the story. However, my background in Spanish culture has helped immensely in the early stages of the novel. Diaz’s language is also filled with many curses which produces a sense of humor and alters the mood of the story. My first impression is that the cultural aspect of Santo Domingo and the Dominican Republic collectively will remain prominent throughout the novel.

“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by, Junot Díaz explores into many issues in the Dominican community. One issue, he shows the audience is the sexim in the community. Throughout the story, one can see how men and women are treated in the culture. Also, one can see the hypocrisy in the culture between men and women.“The Brief Life of Oscar Wao”, shows that in the Dominican community, men believe they have the right to abuse and be deceitful to women and women think it is fine to endure the abuse due to the community’s belief which influence their upbringing, however, characters such as Oscar and Lola broke these norms of the community proving that people have the choice to make their own decisions.

The idea of identity is one that is extremely difficult to master. In novel by Denise Chávez, Loving Pedro Infante, protagonist, Teresina, is once divorced, thirty-years old, living in the border town of Cabritoville, New Mexico, and struggling to attain a life of fulfillment. Unfortunately, she is defined by her obsession concerning Pedro Infante, a dead Mexican movie star. Teresina yearns to have a life with a man as worthy as Pedro as a means of life fulfillment. Teresina does not truly understand what it means to be who she thinks she is as as she places men at the center of her life, allowing men to exert total control over her life.

Throughout the short story, Diaz’s use of Spanish is a connection as seen through the metaphors within his decisions before and during his “date”. Diaz starts off by telling his mom that he’s “feeling too sick [...] to visit [his] tia” even though “[his] mom knows [he] ain’t sick” (Diaz 1). The first word in Spanish is “tia”, meaning “aunt” in English. The connection is first created through his family as the narrator lies to his own mom to go on his “undercover” date. His “tia” takes on the meaning of his Spanish family. Diaz’s use of diction between the English and Spanish creates a connection to Diaz’s culture and wanting to fit into the American lifestyle. He is seen to constantly be at battle between who he wants be and who he really is. One of the first few uses of Spanish is the term “campo” which is used right after he

Each short chapter story written by Junot Diaz presents different key ideas and themes that can easily be identified when reading and analyzing important details contained in his short personal fiction. To begin with, language is one of the important key themes that Junot Diaz focuses on his story. Throughout the chapters, one is able to see a combination of words that contain a mixture of slang in both English and Spanish. Likewise, in his short stories, Diaz includes a variety of Spanish words that are used in his home country as well as other Latin American countries.

I believe the author Samuel Ortiz, in his life experiences, went through stages of cultural identity such as Cultural Dualist, Cultural Alienation, and Cultural Negotiation.

Is Cultural Identity Important? Ever since the first nation was founded, identity based on nationality has been important to mankind. As the early nations developed, they created original cultures that were associated with their respective nationalities. In the present, there are nations that are associated with multiple cultures, such as the United States of America.