Analysis Of Drown By Junot Diaz

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 “Puerto Rican Obituary” by Pedro Pietri, the author takes his readers on a journey of the oppressive life of a Puerto Rican immigrant. He describes a vicious cycle of stagnancy in which immigrants work endlessly without reward. Hopeful every day that the American dream they once imagined would come to fruition, but instead they are continually faced with trials and turmoil on every hand. Instead of uniting as a body to work towards greatness, the immigrants grow envious of each other, focusing on what they lack instead of the blessings that they currently attain. Contrary to the ideals of early immigrants, Pietri portrays Puerto Rico to be the homeland. The ideals of early immigrants have drastically changed throughout the development of America. Petri paints a completely different picture of America throughout his poem. Early immigrants describe an America that is welcoming, with endless opportunities, and a safe haven. Despite earlier depictions of the immigrant experience, these ideals are challenged because they weren’t integrated into society, were inadequately rewarded for hard work, and were disadvantaged due to their socioeconomic status.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, shares his life-long journey as an undocumented immigrant in his text, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.” As the title suggests, Vargas attempts to convey to his audience, who likely never has and never will experience anything similar to what he has, what it is like to live as an immigrant in the United States of America. Skillfully, Vargas details the perfect number of personal stories to reach the emotional side of his audience, which is anyone who is not an immigrant. Through the use of his personal accounts Vargas is able to effectively communicate that immigrants are humans too while simultaneously proving his credibility, as he has experience and a vast amount of knowledge

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

Junot Díaz, unlike most authors, has an ability to tell his stories without the use of large, descriptive passages. With only a few words he can immerse his readers into the environment of his stories, such as the subject work, Drown. Whether in a comfortable suburb or a decrepit neighborhood, Junot Diaz is skilled in producing active scenes with minimal words in his piece Drown. As Barbara Stewart writes about Junot’s work in Outsider with a Voice, “The New Jersey of which [Junot] writes is the one he knows: a place of blue-collar towns and Latino immigrants, of tostones (mashed fried plantains) and malls and roads where ‘beer bottles grow out of the weeds like squashes’” (New York Times, 8 Dec. 1996). I agree with Stewart’s assertion that, “[Junot] writes about the [place] he knows” because of his rich environmental descriptions, and the way he uses this information to provide context within Drown. Díaz uses his language to immerse the reader into his works. One chapter within Drown that illustrates this well is “Aurora”, a chapter centered on the life of drug dealer Lucero and his romantic endeavors with a questionable woman named Aurora. Díaz uses his careful word choice to illustrate the story setting, to provide context clues, and to provide a deeper meaning to the text in “Aurora”.

When one visualizes Latino culture, the prevalent images are often bright colors, dancing, and celebrations. This imagery paints a false portrait of the life of many Latino’s, especially those that are forced to leave their home countries. Latinos often face intense poverty and oppression, whether in a Latin country, or a foreign country, such is true in Pam Ryan’s novel Esperanza Rising. Ryan chronicles the issues that many Latino immigrants face. The first is the pressure from the home country. Many of the countries face turmoil, and many are forced to leave their homes and culture. Once in a foreign place, people often struggle with standing by their own culture or assimilating to the new culture. Latino authors frequently use young adult literature as a platform to discuss the issues they face, as young adults are coming of age they struggle with their identities, personifying the struggle of old culture against the new culture.

However, because it will use examples to organize and describe information seeking a conclusion on the identity formation of undocumented immigrants it is qualitative. I will seek key and specific examples in which Reyna Grande’s personal experience is reflected on her fictional novel. The way in which the novel differentiates from the memoir is also of great importance because these differences highlight something that the author wants to emphasize or hide. Across a Hundred Mountains narrates the fictional story of the immigration of a young girl while The Distance Between Us: A Memoir retells the real experiences of Reyna Grande. Through the identification of the similarities and differences of the memoir and the novel it will highlight the ways in which Grande uses fiction to explain real life experiences that are difficult to

Nowadays, there are many debates and many discussions about the effect of society; our surrounding and how it keeps controlling us or how come we keep letting it change us or letting it make our decisions for us. What many do not understand is that it all happens because they, or better yet, we are society itself. We as a unit give society so much authority that when it comes down to it, we unintentionally allow it to make the decisions for us. This issue becomes very apparent in the movie Moonlight and the collection of short stories “Drown” by Junot Diaz. In “Drown”, through the voice the narrator of the stories Yunior, the author Junot Diaz greets the readers with a seemingly very distressed group of characters by vividly describing

This story reflects the story of a Dominican family’s life in New York after they were force to flee from their homeland. The family discovers their father’s involvement in a plot to over through the country’s leaders. This Pura Belpre awarded book reflects a cultural experience for portraying the author’s outstanding work.

Americanah is a story immigration, of Ifemelu's feelings of foreignness even after 13 years in the US and a successful career, of Obinze's fears of deportation and how it finally came true. The characters experience are exemplary tales of immigrants' experience going into developed countries, or just simply the experience of living in a foreign country for the first time in one's life. The cultural shocks are demonstrated beautifully, especially the frustration over Ifemelu's depression and the feeling of inferiority by illegal immigrants.

Danticat recounts nonfictional experiences from personal accounts and those of intimate distance in a family torn between utter desperation and the endeavor to survive from a depraved Haitian background in prospects of a better future and peace. Immigration for the characters emerges as a matter of need and urgency driven by political and poverty challenges. As the US provides a promise of hope, the Haitian immigrants face a different society that has a flawed contextualization of human rights. Immigrant life is therefore depicted as one ridden with pain and passion of survival and better prospects. There is also the burden of broken family ties and a daily life in a society that accommodates oppression and inequality in the very policies designed to protect "human rights". This paper focuses on how the plight of

Novelist, Pablo Medina, in his short story, “Arrival:1960”, describes Medina as a 12-year-old boy moving to New York from Cuba in hopes of discovering further freedom and opportunity. In Medina’s story, he initially arrives in New York with a pure perspective that life will only improve from there. However, young Medina soon learns the reality of race in America. By telling his story from first person point of view, Medina reveals how it feels to be viewed and stereotyped when one is a different race in the United States.

The character and intelligence of a person is truly shown when he or she is forced to face reality. This is clearly established in “The Swimmer”, a story about a man thrown off his high horse. The story starts with Neddy Merrill and his group of wealthy socialites conversing at the Westerhazys’ house. Flashing back to his Olympic days, Neddy decides to swim through bodies of water to reach his house. He calls this trail the “Lucinda River” and with a lot of effort, as he isn’t as fast as he was in his prime years, he reaches his house, only to find it empty and devoid of his wife and daughters. John Cheever cleverly brings together a seemingly random series of events and combines them. His writing style is best explained by his own words when he says “Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos.” In his award-winning short story, “The Swimmer”, John Cheever uses symbolism, imagery, and characterization to establish a seemingly silly and childish tone that evolves into a somber and realistic mood.

Winning the National Book Award in 1958 for his debut novel The Wapshot Chronicle, John Cheever was highly acclaimed as a novelist, but he may be best remembered for his array of short stories. In the words of the acclaimed novelist Philip Roth, Cheever was an “enchanted realist” who had “as rich and distinctive [voice] as any of the leading voices of postwar American literature.” This ‘voice’ was in full display Cheever’s stories, especially in “The Swimmer,” which is about a man named Neddy Merrill who embarks on a ‘voyage’ to swim across the whole county in the fictionalized Bullet Park. In this upper-middle class suburbia, pool parties are the custom and drinking is a popular pastime, especially for the story’s protagonist.

The narrator in this story is a young man who grew up in poverty. The story is told in past tense and it begins in medias res, but throughout the story there are flashbacks to the young man’s childhood. These flashbacks helps the reader to understand the young man’s inner thoughts, and allows the reader to characterize the main character.