Introduction
In 1996, Junot Díaz released Drown for the first time in the US through Riverhead Books. It received nearly immediate critical acclaim and swiftly shot to the top of the national bestseller list. The issues of Dominican identity, immigration, socioeconomic status, and family are the main themes in the short novella Drown. Thus, this chain of short stories by Junot Diaz is a vivid example of emigrant literature raising the topic of race through the prism of the Dominican experience.
Character Analysis in Junot Diaz’s Stories
In Drown, race and ethnicity play a significant role. Each character uniquely approaches racial and ethnic issues. Particularly Yunior has a complicated relationship with his race, which we watch him work through as Drown goes on. With Rafa’s playful taunts, readers are given an account of Yunior’s physical attributes. He claims that he would given more tasks than others because of his Haitian origin (Diaz para. 15). Thus, the fact that the guy is different in appearance from other white teenagers negatively affects his life.
The characters of Drown experience that the fear of being called different can cause a confidence crisis. Yunior goes through a similar problem once it is revealed that he had two sex sessions with Beto, a childhood friend. He thus descends into a state of anxiousness in the hopes that it will not cause his community to view him differently. He admits spending leisure time as his community requires him to (Diaz para. 30). For him, it is far more comfortable to be seen by one’s community as usual.
However, characters like Ysrael, who are powerless over what sets them apart, have no voice in the issue (Figueroa 13). It is Yunior’s fear of being normal that makes him try to hide the aspects of himself that make people uncomfortable (Diaz para. 13). The end image is not only a story that reveals Yunior’s honest sentiments about himself and his circumstances in life but also a version of him that is not entirely genuine on the outside.
In Drown, the theme of the immigrant experience appears in many of the stories. For instance, the housekeeper from the Dominican Republic is not content with her new life in America. Pruitt, a wealthy white man she works for, mistreats her (Diaz para. 48). This demonstrates racism not only towards the younger generation, as in the examples with the Junior, but also towards the older one, making all representatives of the Dominican race vulnerable to this phenomenon. The brutal accounts of Papi’s American existence serve as tough wake-up calls for many readers regarding the realities of the immigrant experience in the country (Figueroa 3). Too often, the American Dream — that life in the US is far better than life in immigrants’ home countries — is believed. However, in reality, they frequently have to labor themselves to the bone while dealing with bigotry, hunger, and poverty.
Conclusion
The protagonist challenges rigid ideas of identification and shows that identity may be flexible and situational by choosing to highlight and downplay specific facets of their ethnic, racial, class, and gender identities. The characters understand that they have little control over how other people perceive them in this way. Thus, immigrants face racism, and it is tough for them to adhere to the views and values defined in their original community due to the divergence between the new and old ways of life.
Works Cited
Diaz, Junot. “Drown.” The New Yorker. 1996. Web.
Figueroa, Yomaira. “Díaz, Junot.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia. 2020. Web.