Yunior's Story Summary: Immigrant Dominican Culture

Here we are revealed more about human nature. Just like any society that instills fear into its followers or citizens that is exactly what the father does with his family. The father is the figure of power of this family and instead of leading with love and kindness he demonstrates his power through fear and dominance. We are able to see that the family in itself is a whole and loves each other, yet there is this rift between each family member that is threatening to tear it apart. For example, when Yunior gets in trouble with his father and his brother is around instead of standing with Yunior and speaking up Rafa backs away and avoids any confrontation with their father in order to avoid his wrath. This makes Yunior look down on his brother in a sense that Rafa doesn’t have his back at times when he needs him most, so he truly can’t trust him (Shreve & Nguyen, 2006). This is just the small part of the family for there are even parts of the whole family that act in a similar fashion.

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.

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.

As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with

I think Yunior is the opposite of his brother Rafa. Instead of hiding his emotions and keeping everything inside, he looks for attention by acting out. He’s always in trouble, getting a “whack on the nalgas”, or a “slap on my neck”. The year when Papi was supposed to return, he threw tantrums, got hit and was punished almost every day. He rebelled by tearing his clothes, just to hurt his mom. On the day when Mami leaves

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.

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.

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.

“No te quede en el sol por mucho tiempo te va poner negro” Don't stay in the sun for too long you’ll get black.Those are words that I have heard while growing up. Growing up in a Dominican household the culture and beliefs are really strong. A culture that has been passed down through generations. A culture that has been accepted, however just because it's my culture doesn't mean that I have to accept it. In my family, lighter is better, more beautiful. It's not only my family, in Dominican culture being light skin tone is usually related to beauty and success. However, I don't agree with that, the color of your skin doesn't decide if you will be successful. It is who you are that decides that. It is hard to try to talk to the family about

The Dominican Republic or also known as La Republica Dominicana is a small island that is 18,816 square miles, located off the coast of Florida. The Dominicans of this land share their island with the Haitians. The island has a subtropical climate, mountains, rolling hills, and fertile river valleys. The economy is mainly dominated by sugar, which still earns much of the country's foreign exchange despite establishment of varied light industries and the development of nickel, mining and tourism. Coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and bananas are also a major export crop. But, despite their seemingly stable economy, and lush landscaping, a vast majority of the estimated 8,603,200 people that live there wish to migrate to the

The author is using double narrative to emphasis the fathers interdependent self, while we are seeing Yunior struggle between his independent and interdependent self. The father has proven his authority through physical and verbal abuse that his son does not want to out his father's cheating. Part of Yunior interdependent self is doing as he is told by his father and not going against him or there will be punishments. His independent self struggles with the impact of his father cheating on his mother and wanting to tell her. Many times throughout the story, he reflects back on the meeting of his father's mistress when seeing his mother and father together in public. Yunior ultimately decides to follow his interdependent self and not tell his mother

The short story “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, and Halfie” by Junot Diaz is the main character, Yunior’s, guide to dating girls of different races and the ways to act in order to get what you want from them. The only thing Yunior seems to want for these girls is sexual acts. This short story argues that a person’s heritage, economic class, and race affect how a person identifies themselves, and how their identity affects how they act towards other people. The pressures a person may feel from society also has an effect on how a person treats themselves and others. The pressure and expectations from society are also what makes Yunior think he needs to have sex with these girls. There are many different occasions of the main

Even when Yunior eventually meets his father it isn’t all that beneficial either. This reunion, seen in “Invierno” only shows Yunior that his father does not know him. He says “Had I known my father even a little I might not have turned my back on him,” (Diaz 126). This means that even after the reunion, not much was done to bond. This sentence could explain how Yunior’s father sees him just like his mother. His father may, in fact see Yunior as less. This can be seen when Yunior explains

The narrator of this chapter is an eighth-grade girl who lives in Chicago with her immigrant family members. This family came over to the United States from Mexico. The story that she tells us about is one where she was selling produce on a pushcart on weekends. Doing this job to help out her family, she meets this customer known as Boy Baby, whom she falls in love with. Boy Baby tells this girl that he is a descendant from Mayan Kings. Not long after these two people meet, they decide to meet up at Boy Baby’s home. This is where he works and lives. While looking around, Boy Baby shows her his collection of weapons and soon after these two made love. When she went home afterwards, she realised that she left her vegetable push cart at Boy Baby’s house. In which she makes up a tale that her push cart had been stolen earlier that day. Her grandmother did not allow her to leave the house after what had happened. A few weeks went by and this young girl realised that she was pregnant, from that one night that she spent with Boy Baby. Grandmother was able to locate Boy Baby’s sister whom was a nun living in Mexico at the time, but she did not know

To understand the way race has been shaped in the Dominican Republic is to take an in-depth look at the contextual influences that help to mold its nation. Their history began to take shape when Spanish ships of Columbus arrived in 1492. It was the third landfall met by Columbus which named La Española, but, was known as the island of Hispaniola. Today it is known as the Dominican Republic. Columbus’s arrival launched the complicated story of race, colonization and globalization for the people who would inherit the land over the next four hundred years. Within fifty years of Columbus arrival, hundred, if not thousands of indigenous inhabitants had been killed through brutal forced labor, new diseases introduced from European and suicide (Guest).