Without Seeing the Dawn

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.

“His nation chewed him up and spat him out like a pinon shell, and when he emerged from an airplane one late afternoon, I knew I would one day make love with him” (Martinez, 3). And so it starts, the story of a nineteen year old Mexican- American girl named Mary (Maria; as he only chooses to call her), who helps out and eventually falls in love with Jose Luis Alegria, a Salvadoran refugee. Martínez's story of María is told against the backdrop of the 12-year civil war in El Salvador. Maria and Jose Luis develop a friendship that slowly turns into a typical novella love affair. Through their relationship, both characters are forced to confront the violence of their

Eventually Richard Rodriguez develops bitterness towards his parents. For being uneducated and ignorant, His thirst for knowledge has transformed him into someone who holds a distain for those without knowledge or esteem. Then he transforms into someone who feels guilt over his success. His family life has turned into an atypical situation where there is very little closeness between him and the other members of his family. This is caused by his increasing want to distance himself from what he believes to be uneducated.

The weather for this family living in Kansas was not great at all. Due to the drought in the south lead to dust storms that destroyed crops. Crops then turned to dust which meant that there was no food to be sent out. Because of the Dust Bowl, homes were buried, there was no food to be served, not many jobs and most people were either sick because of bad air quality, or unemployed. Since the crops that farmers had were ruined by the drought and the dust bowl, they had no food for themselves or to exchange for other food or supplies they needed. Soup kitchens and breadlines offered free or low cost food for people. Many farmers migrated to California and other Pacific coast states because of being in a bad state of living where they were at.

Although José had two children with a previous wife, Felipe was the first of six with Virginia. Later on in his life, his siblings, María, Mateo, Jesús, Juan, and Virginia, came about. José worked as a carpenter and blacksmith. With the skills of his job, he built the Alou four-room household. On top of that, he also built many of the other houses in the neighborhood. To suit his family’s desperation for money, he became a fisherman to provide for his family. He did this, so his family could be less dependant on his neighbor’s to pay for their bills. He had always been an avid fisherman because he

Setting: Night takes place in Germany during the Holocaust. The majority of the book is taken place in various concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Elie Wiesel uses the setting to develop his story. Night occurs in several different locations between the ghettos and different concentration camps. The year is 1944 when the story starts and Eliezer Wiesel is living in the small town of Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. Not long after the

One thing all human beings, have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and family expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

The first theme of the book is the life of Carmen, “My mom was born in a place called Piedras Negras…a small town in Aguascalientes, Mexico…. I understand that my grandparents were very wealthy and had disowned her when she married my grandfather because of the class issue”(Romero 17). In this quote,

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

hard for people to buy their own land, which is why it was only a

She sometimes sits out by the creek and remembers her father telling her “I am your father, I will never abandon you.” (Cisneros 1) She remembers this only after she is a mother and this is when she realizes “How when a man and a woman love each other, sometimes that love sours. But a parent’s love for a child, a child’s for its parents, is another thing entirely.” (Cisneros 1) Surely by now she feels her love souring. She can not understand why Juan must drink all time and why he continues to beat after he promises that he will never do it again.

The novel is set on San Piedro Island off the coast of Washington in the year 1954. It is a place of “five thousand damp souls” (5). Kabuo Miyamoto, a member of the island's Japanese-American community, is on trial for the murder of Carl Heine, a fellow fisherman. Heine's

One thing all human beings have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and familial expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

To practice machismo, also known as masculinity in a Dominican culture, males have to hide their flaws and act a certain way. If men express their un-masculine nature, they will be seen as expressing their weakness. In Drown written by Junot Díaz, contains many stories about Dominican Republic male struggles as an immigrant in America. One of the struggles Díaz expresses in his text is appearing masculine in society’s eyes. From the story “Drown”, the unnamed narrator expresses what it means to be masculine. “Boyfriend” is a story about another unnamed narrator observing his neighbor’s relationship, and comparing it to his own past. Yunior, the narrator of the story “Negocios”, explains the history of his father Papi, also known as Ramón. Society creates many definitions for what it means to be masculine, leading the narrator from “Drown”, the narrator from “Boyfriend”, and Ramón struggling to choose between doing what they want for themselves, or do what society wants to see.