This is a loosely related group of ten short stories set partly in the Dominican Republic and later in New Jersey. The protagonist and first person narrator, more or less the voice of author Diaz, is a young man growing up in poor neighborhoods, either in the Dominican Republic or Latino neighborhoods in New Jersey. Be forewarned that Drown is for mature audiences. There is much earthy language and many sexual references. In addition, Spanish words and phrases are sprinkled throughout the stories. Although it is not necessary to know Spanish to understand Drown, it helps to know the language, even though many of the words are slang—both in English and Spanish. The world of Drown is rough, violent, poor, and seemingly hopeless, but the language is neutral. There is no self-pity in the writing, but the net effect is compassion for the young people’s situations.

[Plot Summary taken from the Drown Study Guide available at Bookrags.com]

                                                                                                     * * * * *

Junot: “Quería escribir un libro del silencio y de la perdida.” (I wanted to write a book of silence and loss)

                                                                              (Entrevista a Junot Díaz, La Gaceta de Cuba,  P-46)

____________________________________________ *Paper written in 2006 -not revised-

                    It is well-known that every single text in Drown can be read independently, but when put together they make sense as a unit, and therefore it might be possible to trace some clear points of connection and development as seen through the main character: Yunior’s eyes, that is to say, the narrator’s voice ( and therefore the reader’s point of view) through which we will share the main character’s experiences and emotions. Basically, the ten stories in Drown alternate between childhood recollected in the barrios and fields around Santo Domingo, and the lives of first and second generation Dominicans in the gritty industrial streets of New Jersey. On this paper, I will focus my study on four chapters: Drown, Fiesta, How to date a brown girl, black girl, white girl or Halfie and Negocios, for they are the pivotal stories within the book. These four chapters act, from a thematic perspective, as a hall of mirrors which simultaneously fragments and reflects reality:

• Drown’s theme of the arc of transplantation from the Dominican Republic to America, in the process, the entire classical path of Diaspora is traced. The inner narrative of any Diaspora is the story of absence of landscape, customs, and above all individuals. The family portrayed in many of Diaz’ stories is fatherless, and the father’s ghost-presence lies at the core of the novel.
• Fiesta is conceived to mirror immigrant’s recreation of home and Latin Americans behaviours and customs, whilst at the same time connects with the roots to provoke a sense of melancholy in the reader. A party is a time for joy, happiness and pleasure but Junot plays with its inherent semantic meaning, by turning it into desperation, by means of exploring Yunior’s family and its multiple fractures. Another key aspect to consider is the metaphoric construction of the party as a symbol of male dominant status, and female self-sacrifice.
• How to date a brown girl, black girl, white girl or Halfie deals with the young male sexual anxiety and the struggle for acceptance. This chapter presents the stereotypes and prejudices of everyday life that cause desperation, anxiety of psychological race and criminalization of poverty among others. That is to say, How to date a brown girl, black girl, white girl or Halfie basically focuses on social attitudes towards gender and race. In order to to this, Junot addresses the question of gender and race attitudes in a cynically comical way especially in his deconstruction of race founded seduction techniques.
• Negocios examines closely the emotional and psychological process and the radical change of Yunior’s perspective, now considering his father just as a man, so that, this chapter is presented as an epiphany for Yunior and also for the readers, given that we perceive things through his eyes, feelings, emotions and words. Furthermore, this chapter deals with the topics of loss and distance together with the reflections of Dominican history presented as a nightmare from which to escape.

Junot demonstrates admirable skills in extracting and playing upon the heartbreaks of immigrants without being melodramatic in his exposition of the lifeblood and crutch of this gender. Moreover, Drown offers a dignified, decorous and sensitive depiction of immigrant life that will whet America’s terminal nostalgia even if the reader has never been there. For this paper, we will explore how both the material and symbolic are located on the thresholds between memory and nostalgia for the past. And so, everyday life,  in the present and future dreams and fears, can be used to explore the ways in which the material and symbolic are not only gendered -and often embodied by women- but also shaped by inclusions, exclusions and inequalities in terms of class, age, sexuality and race.

I believe that in Drown the urban landscape is presented as a scenario of belonging and alienation, intimacy and violence, desire and fear. Therefore, the city is invested with meaning. The main aim of this paper is to draw a symbolic link between this urban landscape, which I have already described briefly, and the inner-self of the main character, Yunior, by examining his emotions, experiences, and relationships that lie at both the heart of the text and human life. In effect, this paper will portray how the typically urban landscape of New York is useful to metaphorically speaking represent and reflect the psychological (and pathological) process of the individual.

One of the most obvious points for connection is the Latin immigrants’ idea of the American dream. Most of the Latin Americans in the USA dream of human freedom as well as a financial and social liberty, and therefore it is this symbolic ideal that Yumior’s family represents. His family stands for a typical (and Stereotypical) Latin American family, which is inserted within north American society. They have made of this country their own home, a fact which is extraordinarily represented in Drown by Junot through the Republican Dominican tradition. In other words, Junot keeps some sort of order and a community engagement with their own Dominican tradition. As a result, this reconstruction of home is fundamental in comparisons with Anglo-Saxon brutal capitalist culture. Latin Americans dream of having a virtuous education, financial stability, a well furnished home, a reasonable medical service, and dignity in the work place.  The paradox of these dreams is that Latin Americans, sooner or later, find out that the capitalist system of the USA has just as many flaws and problems as their home systems have, which allows them to put things into perspective. They have learnt about the North American great culture as a sort of paradise and as a direct result of this false construction of the American reality. The dream turns consequently into an urban nightmare for Latin American immigrants, and consequantly causes them both strong anxiety and personal crisis. Moreover, these stated points are equally useful as a vehicle to discuss other topics within the stories, as well as their thematic depiction.

Junot’s stunning and candid novel captures deftly and uniquely nature of New York by means of his very personal prose fiction. Nevertheless, the text is not about the United States but rather a specific place in USA, thus showing the other America, which is an inevitable part of itself. This is done throughout a complex urban scenario set in New York, depicted as an object of awe, desire, and disparagement, an image both alluring and, often, frightening. In the same way, every single adjective previously used to depict the city reflects equally the inner self of isolated Latin American immigrant citizens. Thus, metaphorically the city and the self reflect one each other as a mirror, and the objective world constructing reality leads us towards the subjective and the symbolic ones. Besides, the setting and its economical environment provoke the alienation of the inner-self when being cut off and pushed to the margins of society, which is especially emphasized in Junot’s chapter “Drown”. By the same process, the subjective and symbolic worlds transform the concept of the American dream into an urban nightmare, causing immigrant’s anxiety attached to a hard psychological process in which they suffer from a rapid development together with a significant emotional crisis. We can uncover many factors in which those people pushed to the margins try to desperately fight and hide their limitations with respect to the dominant white american society.

Drown, which also gives the name to the novel, projects the emotional and psychological process, together with the topics of loss and distance besides the reflections of Dominican history presented as a nightmare from which to escape. Sadly, those Latin American immigrants situated on the margins of society embody the stereotype of their race, forced by the anglo-dominant society which confined them into this role. Consequently, there is no social faith in them, to the contrary, they are meant to fulfil the social prophesy or social expectations from dominant society by becoming visible as the otherness. Along with this, Junot theorises about sexuality and homosexuality from an emotional and psychological level through and the topic of loss, in this particular case the loss of a friend.

He’s a pato now but last years we were friends and he would walk into my apartment without knocking…   (P-71)

From this last quote, we are also told about masculinity and social exclusion. Masculinity is associated to the traditional concept of Latino stereotype which provokes a sense of anxiety. And this reflects the psychological pressure onto male to cover the social expectation of his attributed role. Here it is a second example of many that can be taken from the text:

My mother asks me if I found Beto, I tell her that I didn’t look. That’s too bad…She’s never understood why we don’t speak anymore. (P-74)

Moreover, Drown reflects the conceptual maturity. It is his knack for language that ultimately enables him to achieve the visual richness of his work and confers tangibility to the experiences he captures in it. In the story, the son is vexed over his gullible mother’s torment by the sly absentee father who sweet-talks her on the telephone from Florida to strip her of some money.

Diaz causes words to show meaning plastically. He is a prose fiction writer who draws on the robust lexical fund at his disposal to sculpt, to paint, to physically imprint the reality of his characters so as to make them seen. He has aptly rehearsed a well-crafted elliptical style and has had the characters speaking Spanish or Latino, without translation, italics or any other editorial assistance for the reader. He has handled those features with such naturalness.

Negocios, reconstructs the adventures of Ramon, a father who has left his wife and children behind to try “to make it in the States,” from the vantage point of Yunior, the youngest son. Yunior’s epiphany, now considering his father just as man, is a central point for this text. If Drown had dealt with the topics of loss and distance, Negocios is an attempt to reconcile with himself and others. Therefore, the ending of the novel also represents the end of Yunior’s metaphoric journey from adolescence towards adulthood. At the end of it, Yunior understands that his father’s life had not been an easy one, and he makes an effort to put himself in his father’s position as a male and the corresponding anxieties.

The company had given him a two-week vacation, which Nilda knew nothing about. He drank a cup of black café in the kitchen and left it washed and drying in the caddy. I doubt if he was crying or anxious. (P-164)

So that, Yunior does not only understands and forgives his father, but also takes the blame off of him. Thus, now, the book points at society to have the main responsibility of their members, by constructing the different roles and social expectations:

…angry at the stupidity that had brought him to this freezing hell of a country, angry that a man of his age had to masturbate when he had a wife, and angry at the blinkered existence his jobs and the city imposed on him. (P-139)

And it also seems as if Yunior accepts his father’s infidelity by blaming on society:

…angry that a man of his age had to masturbate when he had a wife… (P-139)

Furthermore, it denotes a sense of masculinity desires that cannot be dismissed. It fits in with his father characterization. The first line in fiesta is very important because it shows the desperation, desire and anxiety of Latin Americans to get away from their native countries.

Mami’s youngest sister –mi Tia Yrma – finally made it to the United States that year. (P-23)

They imagine the US to be heaven on earth, but when they already do live there, it turns into a hostile nightmare. The first impact causes on them a sense of disillusionment, that is to say, the end of the American dream and the beginnong of the clash with the external reality. In this sense, Fiesta is pictured to echo the Latin American’s recreation of home in exile, behaviours, and customs whilst at the same time trace a sentimental line to create a feeling of glum in the reader.

About two hours later the women laid out the food and like always nobody but the kids thanked them. It must be some Dominican Tradition or something. There was everything I liked- chicharrones, fried chicken, tostones, sancocho, rice, fried cheese, yucca, avocado, potato salad, a meteor-sized hunk of pernil, even a tossed salad… (P- 36-37)

From this quote we get a taste of Dominican tradition from names and traditional foods, and in the meantime it shows the importance of dominant society for they –Latinos- live between two languages, and therefore between two cultures in the middle of nowhere. It shows that their tradition is part of them even when they go abroad for it is on their psychological background. Moreover, fiesta reconstructs a Nation and “the party” transform then into a kind of symbolic trend, which becomes the Dominican Republican by means of some traditional elements as for example food and language.

The family’s multiple fissures are built up throughout the text as the background but it also transforms itself into another topic within the novel. In the following quote we appreciate Yunior’s love for me mother, his loyalty to keep the unity of the family, and his respect to his father, who embodies law:

Tia smiled a lot and that was what set them apart the most. How is it going?… Maybe it was family loyalty, maybe I just wanted to protect Mami or I was afraid that Papi would find out – it could have been anything really. (P-39)

The contrast between his father, who likes American things, and his mother, who does not, becomes symbols in many ways and reflects others together with the ambivalence of the American modernity as opposed to Old Traditional Republican Dominican culture. Thus, the symbolism for the characters is clear. Whilst the father stands for the adoption of values of American society, the mother represents the core of her roots in Republican Dominican. Consequently they are opposed symbolically as two different Latinos even when considering them as plain stereotypes.

Moreover, his mother’s role  is symbolically associated with a conservative thought, which represents at the same time the moralality and values of Republican Dominican. She is depicted in the typical way for a female character, that is to say, as passive one. The father keeps the macho male role typically reserved for Latinos: he is active, unfaithful, rude, strict. His characterisation is built upon the opposition to his wife’s. The next quotes testify the differences between them. In the first of them we can see the mother’s role, based on traditional labours, who is confined to the domestic sphere:

I was never supposed to eat before our car trips, but earlier, when she had put out our dinner of rice, of beans and sweet platanos, guess who had been the first one to clean his plate? You couldn’t blame Mami really, she had been busy –cooking, getting ready, dressing my sister Madei. I shouldn’t have reminded her not to feed me but I wasn’t that sort of son. (P-25)

The mother is a sort of protector for Yunior in many cases, as well as the feminist world and its characters, for example Tia Yrma, are related throughout the novel as being compressive, sensitive, and all the traditional female connotations and virtuous moral values, as seen in next quotation the females in the text embody good morals and attitudes.

It was Tia who finally saved me. She came into the living room and said, since you ain’t eating, Yunior, you can at least help me get some ice… She held my hand while she walked; Tia didn’t have any kids but I could tell she want the… she opened her pocketbook and handed me the first of three pastelitos she had smuggled out of the apartment. (P-38)

The father is built upon the female character values and the Republican Dominican ones in opposition to them. So that, he is invested with some negative values from the Latino’s male stereotype of a macho, as being oppressive and strict to everyone but self-indulgent to himself. The next quotations exemplify some of the values that derive from him in the text.

He punched me…He had a few strands of hair around his nipples and surely closed-mothed expression… (P-25)

We can observe how the depiction starts to portray the typical appearance and aggressiveness associated to Latin stereotype. 

…Papi was old fashion old-fashioned; he expected your undivided attention when you were getting your ass whupped. You couldn’t look him in the eye either –that it wasn’t allowed. Better to stare at his belly button, which was perfectly round and immaculate. Papi pulled me to my feet by my ear. (P-26)

This characterisation of the father’s figure is also constructed upon the basis of the relationship with his son Yunior. In the following quote we see how Yunior responds exactly to his father’s characterisation as macho Latino, machista and bruto:

…That was the way he was with his punishments: imaginative. Earlier that year I’d written an essay in school called “My father the torturer” but the teacher made me write a new one. She thought I was kidding.

As a normal consequence of Yunios’ parent’s relationship and contrasts, Yunior is the representation for the contemporary generation caught in between two cultures. He is a hybrid of the two. He is in between his father and mother, so that Yunior’s psyche is the perfect illustration of a real inner-battlefield: a psychological process in which he tries to keep his Dominican roots, from his mother, and the American modernity adopted from his father.

How to date a brown girl, black girl, white girl or Halfie deals with the adolescent manly sexual concern, anxiety and the struggle for acceptance.

Hide the pictures of yourself with an Afro. (P-143)

On the one hand, this quote represents the pathology of black Dominicans and the anxiety of psychological race. On the other, this chapter also presents the stereotypes and prejudices of everyday life which cause them desperation:

-If she is a white girl you know you’ll at least get a hand job. (P-144)            

-The whit ones are the ones you want the most, aren’t they, but usually the out-of-towners are black, black girls who grew up with ballet and girl scouts, who have three cars in their drive ways. (P-145)

-You have choices. If the girl is around the way take her to el Cibago for dinner. Order everything in your busted-up Spanish. Let her correct you if she is Latina and amaze her if she’s black.  (P-145)

-Dinner will be tense. You are not good at talking to people you don’t know. A halfie will tell you that her parents met in the Movement, will say back then people thought it a daring thing to do. It will sound like something her parents made her memorize. (P-146)

In fact the whole chapter is a kind of manual that addresses the question of gender and race attitudes in a cynically comical way, especially in his deconstruction of race seduction techniques.

In conclusion, throughout this paper, I have briefly established how the urban landscape is presented as a scenario of belonging and alienation, intimacy and violence, desire and fear. A city is invested with meaning by drawing a symbolic link between this urban landscape, and Yunior’s inner-self by examining his emotions, experiences, and relationships that lie at both the heart of the text and human life.

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The Landscape as Soulscape in Drown by José María Pérez Sánchez (Licenciado en Filologías Inglesa e Hispánica), unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Spain License.