A Review of "Drown" by Junot Diaz

     The fact that I

         am writing to you

         in English

         already falsifies what I        

         wanted to tell you.

         My subject:

         how to explain to you that I

         don’t belong to English

         though I belong nowhere else.

         Junot Diaz opens his book, Drown, by quoting Gustavo Perez Firmat. Drown is a compilation of short stories written by Junot Diaz over a period of many years.  Some of the short stories were previously published separately, however, Penguin Group first published it as a compilation in 1996. The general theme of the texts is the male experience of Dominican Republic immigrants living in the United States. Diaz uses blended language, a mix of English with some Spanish, as a tangible expression of the blend of culture that the characters experience.

         A main character that appears throughout many of the stories is named Yunior. We see him at different points in his childhood—when he’s eight and his father is gone working in another country, when he’s eleven and trying to keep his dad’s mistress a secret from his mother, when he’s learning about sexual interactions from his older brother. The texts are laced with strong imagery and character, showing the struggle that is realistic in being an immigrant, as well as trying to obtain this idea of the American Dream, despite having no upper hand. Themes of poverty, trying to make ends meet, and most importantly, in my opinion, the reality that the circumstances of the characters are unchanging is what struck me the most throughout these stories.

         I find Diaz refreshing for many reasons. The stories follow his characters experiencing things in their everyday lives. Nothing that he is written here is something out of the ordinary to them. It is in Diaz’s subtleties, in what his characters experience as normal, that speak volumes in his stories. He speaks about Dominican Republic immigrants specifically because he shares that experience. This is a group of immigrants that are not often heard of, even in the fictional realm, so it is a nice window to the plausible experience and frustration that someone would face in those circumstances. But even more than that, his stories bring the reader in to these lives with vivid detail and realistic dialogue. The reader is not an outsider, but is thrown right in to the middle of the narrative.

         My only issue with this compilation was finding a way to tie the stories together. Diaz does not make it clear what exactly the stories contain. When I as a reader saw Yunior come back time and time again, but not in all the stories, I wondered if the unnamed narrators were also him. I actually had to do some research to double-check that all of the stories were indeed not about the same person. However, by taking each story, as it’s own separate entity, it was easy to be encompassed and moved by Diaz’s simple but beautiful language. I highly recommend this book.