##sychoanalytic Theory On Junot Diaz's 'How To Date A Brown Girl'

What does it mean to you to be a black girl? If you aren’t one, what do you see when you visualize a black girl? If your imagination limits you to just an afro-centric featured, loud and slang-loving, uneducated woman, then this piece is addressed to you. The persistence of the stereotypes concerning average black girls have chained us all to the earlier listed attributes. One side effect of this dangerous connection is the wide opening for a new form of discrimination it creates. Whether it is depicted through slave owners allocating the preferable duties to lighter-skinned black woman, or in modern times where a dislike in rap music categorizes you as not really black, segregation within black communities occur. Tracing all the way back to elementary school, my education on the subject of racial segregation has been constricted to just the injustices routed by dissimilarities between racial groups. What failed to be discussed was the intragroup discrimination occurring in the black society from both outside observers and inside members. Unfortunately, our differences in the level of education, in physical appearance, and in our social factors such as our behaviour, personality or what we believe in have been pitted against each other to deny the variety of unique identities that we as black individuals carry.

As of recently, the media has been flooded with positive interpretations of beauty standards all over the world. According to various sources, beauty ideals, in women especially, are socially constructed in order to judge a person’s value based on physical attractiveness; therefore, it is highly encouraged that people pay attention to their looks and take care of themselves, in order for others to create a positive first impression of one’s character. It is no secret that beauty standards vary from one culture to the next and it is difficult to establish a universal principle of what is considered beautiful. Many countries’ ideals contrast one another and, as a result, allow for stereotypes to emerge. This is the case between American

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

In How to date the narrator is waiting for a girl to come over to his house. While he was waiting he said, “(...) usually the out-of-towners are black, black girls who grew up with ballet and girl scouts, who have three cars in their driveways” (Diaz 2). This quote is talking about how the narrator thinks a woman's life is based on her color. In the quote the narrator said that, “usually the out-of-towners are black.’ This is stereotypical because, he is just assuming that she will be from out of town because she is black. He also assumed that she grew up with ballet and girl scouts. Everything that the boy said are stereotypical towards females of a darker color. This quote is showing how minorities stereotype other minorities and how the narrator judged the girl based on stereotypes that he learned at school or in the street. Just like the mexican stereotypes they were both given to them based on what people see from the outside not by how someone is on the inside. People using the stereotypes to assume how someone is is not good because they never learn how the person is on the inside. They just assume

For Black people, race is a never-ending conscious component of life in America. We live in a country with a history of slavery that, once ended, extended into an institution and system of laws; Jim Crow, that continue to keep members of the Black community “othered” and invisible. The threefold purpose of this writing is to discuss how the treatment of African-American patients engaging in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy - as they exist today - fails to meet their full potential in the healing of the Black psyche; and to consider how the training curriculum can be expanded to include writings of Black psychoanalysts; and to encourage the analytic community to be opened up to include more analysts of

The well known phrase “opposites attract” holds true in all cases, at least where electromagnetism is concerned. But even in the world of emotions this coined statement often holds some bearing, constantly appearing between romantic partners, colleagues, and everyday acquaintances. In The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, Aminata, an African child brought over to North America as a slave, demonstrates just how important this concept is. Thrown into a new world with little knowledge of her situation, Aminata develops multiple relationships with those around her as a means for survival, proving how people with vastly different personalities can form connections if the situation asks for it. As The Book of Negroes protagonist, survival becomes

The culture of Mango Street lends itself to espousing two main gender roles for women, most importantly the role of mother and caretaker, and less significantly, as sexual figure. Women on Mango Street commonly embrace or are forced to embrace at least one of these roles. Marin, a woman who takes care of her cousins by day and sits outside smoking by night, easily embodies both roles. Sally particularly exemplifies that women cannot get away from the gender roles that bind them. In her family, being a female means becoming a vulnerable person for the man to control. However, Sally prefers to ignore this gender role and advertise herself as a seductress. As she agrees to give “a kiss for each” boy (Cisneros 97) in exchange for her keys back, “beauty is linked to sexual coercion …; there are no promises of marriage here, only promises of giving back to Sally what is already hers” (Wissman). Her family rejects his role, though to some extent accepted by Mango Street. By accepting the alternate gender role, Sally tries to break away from the gender role her family expects of her. However, she is unsuccessful. To escape from her father, Sally is “married before eighth grade” (Cisneros 101) to an equally controlling man who “won’t let her talk on the telephone” or “look out the window” (Cisneros 102). The marriage is a way

The central message of this work is that society is obsessed with appearances. The point the author is trying to make is beauty should not be the most important trait of a person. In today’s society everything is based on looks, people are more concerned about a person’s outward appearance. People strive to

The Dark Matter of Love is an interesting study about child development across the lifespan. In this documentary, the Diaz family consisted of the father, mother, and one child (Cami) before the adoption. This family decides to adopt three Russian children all at once. It is important to mention that none of these children had experience love in their lives and they all had very different personalities.

Further examples of Diaz explaining how Yunior shows his Anti-feministic signs, is when he signs up for the yoga class. The first thing Yunior says about the class is, “Elvis was certainly right. There are mad hos, all with their asses in the air” (Diaz year two). This sentence in the story can bring up controversy, of the way Diaz Writes, and the way he portrays his characters to talk. In the peer edited review article, “Feminism and Anti-Feminism” by Clyde Wilcox, the author explains that, “the smallest group (17 percent) was composed of anti-feminists who were generally moderate to liberal on other issues. We might refer to this group as Liberal Anti-Feminists. This group was the least likely to be employed, to report a family income of over $30,000, or to have attended some college” (Wilcox 156). Although Yunior was a professor at a college, he stated earlier in the short story that he had moved apartments a few times, and eaten out a lot because of his financial status. This shows that when stress was added to Yunior, he would go out and look for people to hook up with and be intimate with to take his mind off of what was happening in the world around him. This could have also been another reason he cheated on his fiancé because the stress she carried with her and their financial status together, caused him to have uncontrollable emotions. Either way, proving he was against respecting women and what they did

Love is expressed differently by all, some like Salamono may tuck it away, only to release it when the lover has left forever. Others , like Marie, choose to boast it to the world without hesitation. This quality is her confidence is herself shining through. She never fails to attest to what she wants “Then she said she wondered if she

The decision to go against conformity is the only way to escape the situation that one is in, as shown in Díaz’s novel and Malala’s journey. Oscar, the main protagonist of Díaz’s novel, is frequently told by the people around him who he is and who he must be, sparking a deep conflict within Oscar. “Our hero was not one of those Dominican cat’s everybody’s always going on about ... dude never had much luck with the females (how very un-Dominican of him)” (Díaz, 11). From the beginning of the book, Oscar is pinned as an unfavorable choice for women. He notices this when girls reject him for the way he looks and his family members critique his lack of “improvement”. The Dominican expectation tells men they should be charming and a lothario however Oscar is neither. Oscar has the decision to conform to or reject the expectations. As it is more difficult to push the expectations away, Oscar spends his life chasing women in hopes of sex, which is also

Countless more scenarios cross Julian’s mind, but none of them would deceive his mother more than the last one. “Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman” (O’Connor 634). By describing dating a black woman as an “ultimate horror,”, Julian reveals through his thoughts his inner snob, a trait he obviously acquired from being around his mother.

In the first quadrant, the speaker examines both sides of the young man’s life where he looks at the darker and better sides but most importantly demonstrating the way he misuses his good-looking ability to commit sexual crimes. However, the speaker does not condemn it openly but appreciates his good look “how sweet and lovely” (1), but

The research findings showed that a man’s sexual attraction to a woman was increased by young women associated with red, but it was not increased by older women with red. It also revealed that the older participants found the two age groups of women equal in their sexual attraction, while the younger participants did not find the older women, as sexually attractive as the younger women. The color red did not affect physical attractiveness, intellect, and empathy. In addition, the article greatly contributed to the theories of social psychology. In Exploring Psychology in Modules, the author discusses physical attractiveness. He discusses how among different cultures, men are attracted to women through signs of the body. These signs indicate fertility, which makes the man more attracted to a woman. This understanding may help to show why both age groups of men were equally attracted to the younger women in the pictures, as opposed to the older women, where only the older men found them equally attractive to the younger women (Schwarz & Singer,