Student Zone

Tommy Toth
Response #12

I had a problem with the first post so I had to repost my response and question>

Response:
The writing style of the Junot Diaz, in “Drown,” particularly in “Aurora” is from a first person narrative point of view. He is speaking of his life growing up poor, with his friends and family. The development of the characters in Aurora was unique. Cut and Junot or “Yunior” sold drugs because they needed money. Yunior spent time with Aurora because they both needed companionship. Eggie was the one people messed with when he was doped up. The irony in the story was Aurora was on drugs. She could have been sleeping around a lot and had a disease. Although Yunior did use a condom, there could have been times he didn’t. In relation to the rest of the stories “Aurora” shed light onto Yunior’s personality and character.
Question:
Did Yunior start selling drugs to live a glamorous life, or because he needed money and there were no jobs?
How old was Yunior when he started smoking super weed?

The Crying Game 2: Beto’s Back!

In “Drown” by Junot Diaz, Yunior is in his late-teens and living alone with his mother in New Brunswick. His father has again deserted them for a woman in Florida, reduced to, “…a sad guy who calls and begs for money.” Judging from the other stories, the year should be around 1987. The story begins with Yunior’s mother informing him that Beto has come home. Yunior appears indifferent to the news, admitting they used to be friends, but he’s a “pato” (gay man) now.

Yunior shifts back a few years, to the summer before Beto went off to college. Yunior still had one year to go in high school; him and Beto were “raging” back then with theft and vandalism. He describes that Beto, “…hated everything about the neighborhood,” and couldn’t wait to leave. Remembering the times he and Beto used to break into the local community center pool and swim, he decided to look for him there. Upon arrival, he realizes he is the oldest “motherfucker” there––almost. Enjoying the pool, a few kids recognize him as their purveyor of “shitty dope” (he isn’t selling on the scale of “Aurora” yet).

Cut back to the house, and the dilapidated soul acting as Yunior’s mother. He waxes poetic on how despondent she’s become, explaining that, “She has discovered the secret to silence: pouring café without a splash…” Albeit her depression, she and Yunior still interact in a respectable/loving manner. They coexist by watching movies, the news and taking trips to the mall. Yunior makes it a point to give her money for clothes; he can’t stand the thought of her milling around the “on-sale” racks. She asks him (again) why he cut ties with Beto, but he dodges the question with ambiguous statements (“everything changes). From here, Yunior plunges into a flashback about the “golden age” of his shoplifting days with Beto. His mother never new the score, but his father (who was either visiting or hadn’t left at this point) understood and gave him an ominous warning surrounded in foreshadow: your going to GET CAUGHT (my emphasis). Papi’s words rang true, but unfolded differently than he imagined. On a careless shoplifting spree, Beto and Yunior are nearly caught and chased out of the mall. Hiding under a Jeep Cherokee, they’re accosted by a security guard. Yunior begins to cry in fear of the situation, but remembers Beto’s surprising attempts to comfort him, “…his hand squeezing mine, the bones of our fingers pressing together.”

Pan over to Yunior describing his days at the time: harassment from Army recruiters, intricate strategies to be truant from school, clubbing with this friends. Beto didn’t skip class, he told Yunior he needed to learn how to “walk in the world,” that there was “a lot out there.” In the culmination of the story, Yunior admits why he had a falling-out with Beto. Near the end of that same summer, he was at Beto’s house watching his father’s porn with him. Unexpectedly, Beto reaches into Yunior’s shorts and engages in homosexual action. Yunior is unable to stop him, and it’s over before he knows it. He leaves, shaken up. The next day he staves off being freaked out; deciding their friendship is what’s most important. They meet at the pool, only to end up at Beto’s place again. He’s lured into to sexual activity once again, but doesn’t object––he actually, displays a very tranquil state “slowly rocked back and forth.” Yunior flees the scene after nearly being caught (it was only the neighbor next door), and doesn’t speak to Beto again. The story ends with Yunior watching a movie with his mother.

In response I must say: I unabashedly loved these stories. I was more impressed with Diaz’s style than Carver’s; he’s just a little more refined it seems.

In analysis, I want to correlate the effects of Yunior’s home-life/environment, spilling over into his experimenting with Beto. By this time Yunior’s father and his brother Rafa are gone, leaving Beto as his primary male outlet. I can gather the feeling of detachment from his parents’ failed marriage and vote-of-no-confidence in his father has filled him with multi-faceted tension he isn’t quite sure how to deal with. He hints to this (in a throwback to “And Start West” from Burroughs) by saying, “The heat in the apartments was like something heavy that come inside to die,” and later in the pool adding, “While everything above is loud and bright, everything below is whispers.”

At the same time I saw a level of envy between the two young men, an equal level of displacement and alienation washed over Yunior. He tells his mother she is a “shadow warrior” in light of her saddened state, and that lack of centering is symbolically answered in the reoccurring descriptions of their apartment. Diaz keeps coming back to the windows, and Yunior’s mothers’ fanatical routine to test the windows to make sure they’re locked. Yunior nails their current family-motto saying, “With the air conditioner on we never open widows…” This fits perfectly as we see Yunior failing at school, saying, “I hated every single teacher on the planet.” Interestingly though, he’s one-upped by Beto, who does great in school, but can still go “raging” with his best friend. So when Beto tells his he needs to “learn how to walk the world,” it carries a greater weight than any sexual connotation that could also be applied. Yunior has put himself in his own ghetto, of the mind. At the same time, he is disgusted with his mother’s flicker-of-hope in the invariable conversations with his father. He says, “His words coil inside of her, wrecking her sleep for days.” I would attribute his relationship with Beto, or rather the escalation of his relationship, as a rebellion of sorts to the failure of his parents’ marriage.

In the aftermath of Berto and Yunior’s union, Berto unprovked, kept saying “no one can TOUCH ME” (my emphasis), in anticipation to leave for college. I found the flashback where Yunior’s old teacher compared them to shuttles he recalls directly after Berto’s quote, to be the most significant and revealing part of the story. To make my point I’ll reiterate the passage, “A few of you are going to make it. Those are the orbiters. But the majority of you are just going to burn out. Going nowhere. He dropped his hand onto his desk. I could see myself losing altitude, fading, the earth spread out beneath me, hard and bright.” This self-loathe is the “true” rejection that Yunior felt from his experience with Beto and his departure, not uncertainty of his sexuality. This is why he’s confused about the actors’ performance in the movie he watches at the end with his mother. He says, “The actors throw themselves around, passionate, but their words are plain and deliberate. It’s hard to imagine ANYBODY going through life this way.” (my emphasis)

In Fiesta, 1980 we are taken in a narrative of a Dominican family through the eyes of a boy. Junior, his brother, his younger sister, and his Mami wait for his father to shower, the boys know he’s showering because he just left his Puerto Rican mistress. Their preparing for a party thrown for his mother’s sister and his uncle. They finally made it to the US. There’s a moment of tension when the father discovers, Junior's eaten with the family. Apparently, he gets car sick, and vomits in the car. Papi pulls him to his feet by his ear and threatens him he better not throw up in the new Volkswagen van bought to impress people. Junior feels it’s his “God-given duty to piss him off”. In the car his mother offers him candy to keep him occupied. It didn’t work and he still vomits on the way to the party. They stopped on the side of the road so he could brush his teeth, him and his mother alone. Arriving at the party his brother tells how he vomited and his uncle tries to console him saying he had a rough plane ride coming over. Miguel offers him some rum and beer and Junior’s mother says he’s too young. Miguel comments in Santo Domingo “he’d be getting laid by now”. Miguel takes the family on a tour of the apartment. Junior thinks it’s very “Contemporary Dominican Tacky”. The children join other children in the living room and leave the adults to be. There were two cute girls and a mute and another boy. The girls and the other boys paired off leaving Junior with the mute. From the kitchen came sounds of his father’s loud aggressive voice. Junior notices how happy his mother is with her sister preparing the meal. His mind trails off to the first time his father introduced him to his mistress, right after he had gotten the new van. On a practice trip he threw up and his father took him to the Puerto Rican mistress to clean him up. His father and the mistress disappeared upstairs for an hour.
At the party the women laid out the food and Papi said Junior was to get none. Later, his aunt snuck him three pastelitos. She questioned him about his parents and he mostly shrugged saying his father works a lot. His mind trails again to when he confided in his brother about the mistress. Rafa already knew. By late evening the adults were dancing and Junior was guarding the door to where the kids were “getting busy”. Junior noticed his mother and aunt talking. He expected trouble, like his father being declared a cheater, but nothing came of it. He had the urge to hug her, but there were too many people to cross. Once ago she questioned him if anything was wrong, but he didn’t tell her about the mistress just declared problems in school. On the way home from the party Junior predictably vomits again.
Diaz does a good job of capturing this coming of age story and telling it through an adolescence eyes. His stories weren’t exactly comforting but realistic of a migrant family coming to terms with their new American Identities. Their father who has a sense of responsibility, but drowns in reality. In Fiesta, 1980 it’s hinted that the father would eventually leave when Junior says he still wanted his father’s love until later “when he was out of their lives”. Fiesta, 1980 was a walk down memory lane compared to some of the other stories like “Aurora” that dealt with twisted love, or “Drown” struggling with homosexuality.

Questions: Do immigrants families have an unattainable expectation of what life is really like in the states? And does that unrealistic future set them up for failure?

I am curious as to why Diaz is compared to Raymond Carver. I read these at the end of the stories because I don't want to be entreated. Rather, I prefer an organic reading experience.

Did anyone else find this a little absurd, or did anyone else agree with this statement?

Here's what I thought, in retrospect. The work seems vulnerable-or leaving the reader feeling vulnerable. It is edgy and raw,and I think those are qualities found in Carver's work, still I can't say that I think the two writers are alike.

What do you think?

Question: Since it appeared at the beginning, I had a hard time getting the reference to “government cheese.” What is this? I assumed it was something that the guy didn’t want the girls to see.

The story “How to Date a Browngirl…” is a short explanation of the narrator’s approach to dating girls of different races and of different places (outside of the neighborhood for example). It is also an exploration of the narrator’s insecurity within his own race that makes him think that he would have to approach each girl differently.

The narrator starts off with, “take down any embarrassing photos of your family…especially the one with the half naked kids,” Certainly this could be embarrassing, but the narrator seems to be more embarrassed, because it is as if the kids in the photo don’t understand his embarrassment. The photo is what it is. He continues, “The kids are your cousins and by now they’re old enough to know why you’re doing what you’re doing” (143). It was to me as if they knew what he was ashamed of. It gave me as the reader, a sense that he already had these barrier built up, something to be defensive about. I suppose dating a different girl each time requires different defenses. It really has less to do about the girls so much as it does the narrator.

I feel that in relation to the texts that we have read through out the semester, this story reminded me a lot of the classic misfit in a world that is broken up into many fragments. The narrator explains these different fragments by describing each girl. Each comes from a different background, and each makes him feel less like he belongs to any category or fragment, or world that the girls come from. When he speaks of dating a white girl, he says, “Tell her you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than your own” (147). As a reader, it made me think of the guy from the Invisible Man, who wanted to make himself invisible, and essentially chummed with white people in order to defy them.

Here, it is as if the narrator wishes to be white because it would make all the rest of the insecurity go away. If he was white, he wouldn’t have to worry about having an afro, or embarrassing pictures from the campo, or having government cheese in the fridge. When he speaks of the “home girls”, he seems to be a little more comfortable, but still a little condescending. He obviously doesn’t want a home girl because it keeps him where he is, everybody knows his business, and it means making dating the same as sticking to the same place; he doesn’t seem like he belongs in the hood either.

The narrator leaves us with this last piece of advice: “Don’t go down stairs. Don’t fall asleep. It won’t help.” It is as if to say that he will remain uncomfortable.

The story entitled “No Face” involves a boy named Ysrael, who is also a character from the first story in the book. Ysrael, horrifically disfigured from a pig-attack as a baby, is mockingly called No Face by members of the community. Ironically, he seems to have adopted this name, as well as the personae of a comic book superhero, perhaps to emulate the pro-wrestlers he admires. The superhero alter-ego is also represented by the blue cotton mask he consistently wears to hide disfigurement. The story begins with one of Ysrael’s fantasies; he has superhuman strength, “does his pull-ups, nearly fifty now”(153), and uttering the word “FLIGHT” allows him to soar above his home to protectively watch his mother and brother below. However, the ability is only in his mind; in reality, he runs about the barrio, past the refuse in the alleys, and ends up at the church where Padre Lou is teaching him the minimal English he will need to know when he goes to Canada for an operation. Padre Lou, one of the few people who is kind to Ysrael, lets him purchase comic books once a week. He also cleans Ysrael’s wounds after he gets attacked by neighborhood bullies, and plays the role of the concerned father regarding Ysrael’s upcoming trip to Canada.

The story of how Ysrael had his face eaten by the pig has already been reported secondhand in a previous short story; however, in this story, Ysrael tells the incident himself and in greater detail. Ysrael is living a nightmare, and the memories of what happened to him often creep into his dreams. Padre Lou takes him to clinic in Ocoa, which is filled with other unfortunate children suffering from various gruesome ailments. The next day, Ysrael plays outside with his younger brother Pesao, noting how perfectly shaped his little head is. He tells Pesao that he has been fighting evil, and they play together until their mother rushes outside and instructs Ysrael to put on his mask. Their father is coming outside, and it is now clear why Ysrael must always hide. He is not welcome in his own home.

Diaz portrays Ysrael as a boy caught between two worlds: a harsh and grotesque reality and a heroic and noble fantasy. Similarly, Diaz himself is caught between two worlds, as an immigrant trying to find his place in America. In the first story, “Ysrael”, Diaz creates a connection between his young, childhood self and Ysrael. Both boys enjoy wrestling and the sense of escape that it provides. The connection between Diaz and Ysrael is furthered in the story “No Face”; Ysrael’s struggles represent Diaz’s internal identity conflict. Diaz lives in the United States, yet is never really fully “Americanized”, hence his inclusion of Spanish words and terms throughout his short stories.

Both Ysrael and Diaz are outsiders, those destined to live on the fringes of a particular society. In some ways, this reminds me of the MisFit characters from the works of O’Connor and Burroughs, and like the MisFits, both Diaz and Ysrael are elevated at the expense of the “mainstream” society. Diaz portrays Ysrael as an ethical boy with a keen sense of justice and morality – “A viejo needs help pushing his cart. A cat needs to be brought across the street”(155) – which neatly contrasts the cruel nature of his neighbors. Comparatively, in his short stories, Diaz exalts his native language and undermines English. He does this primarily in two ways: first, by including extensive amounts of Spanish in a book published by an American publishing group and written for an American audience, and second, by including the quote by Gustavo Perez Firmat at the beginning of the book. The quote is particularly insightful in terms of placing Diaz as a self-proclaimed MisFit: “My subject: how to explain to you that I don’t belong to English though I belong nowhere else.”

QUESTION:
The first half of the Firmat quote, “the fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you”, is interesting when applied to Diaz’s short stories. Are Diaz’s stories “falsified” by the fact that they are predominantly in English? Is his incorporation of Spanish words a way to make his work more “authentic”?

“Negocios” is the Spanish word for business. It is also the title of the final story in Junot Diaz collection, Drown. The story is about a 24 year-old Dominican “pendejo, hombre” named Ramon de la Casas who cheats on his wife, and leaves his family in the Dominican Republic. The story is recounted and told from his son’s omniscient point of view. The story is a concise account of his father’s affairs. I thought that the son who was telling the story foreshadowed the end, because how else would the abandoned son know his father’s story?

The story begins with the narrator saying, “Papi was planning on leaving for months.” His father was having an affair with a “puta” and his mother heard about it from rumors in their barrios. Ramon leaves one night and shacks up with the “puta,” but almost immediately returns when he remembers his father-in-law’s money. He convinces the old man that he wants what is best for his wife and children and that plans to take them to United States. The old man believes him and eventually gives Ramon ”a box full of cash.” Instead, Ramon takes the money and flees to Miami.

Survival in Miami is not easy. Ramon doesn’t speak a word of English and has to work two shifts just to be able to afford an apartment to share with three Guatemalans and sleep on the floor. Ramon goes out drinking a lot with one of his roommates, Eulalio and eventually learns some English to help him get by. After losing his job, Ramon figured out he was being ripped off by Eulalio. So he left Miami and took a bus to Virginia. To save money, he decided to walk the rest of the way north to Nueva York. Although, he managed to bum a few rides along the trip, Ramon arrived safely to NYC.

After a year in Washington Heights of NYC, Ramon sent letters and some money home to his family in D.R. His wife eventually forgives him and they establish a channel of communication exchanging letters and photos. Ramon promises to bring them to Nueva York, but instead starts looking for a bride to marry him to make him legal. Ramon sets up a deal with a lady and winds up getting stiffed for $800 dollars. Down but not out, Ramon eventually meets a nice woman named Nilda, who is Dominican and has been in the states for six years. They marry and have a family.

Throughout all of this, Ramon does manage to make a true friend, Jo-Jo. He is the guy who wants to talk “business” with Ramon and offers several job opportunities to Ramon to help set him up so he could bring his family to the States. Nilda eventually, becomes an obstacle and a roadblock in Ramon’s plan. Ramon is torn between his lies with Nilda and his guilt for abandoning his Dominican family. He even takes a trip back to Dominican Republic and never visits his family. “With his back killing him and his life with Nilda headed down the toilet, Papi began more and more to regard his departure as inevitable. His first famila was the logical destination. He began to see them as his saviors, as a regenerative force that could redeem his fortunes” (204). Ramon slowly smuggled his clothes out of Nilda’s house.

In the end his eldest son comes to New York to find him, but Ramon is gone. His son believes that he went to the Dominican Republic to get the rest of his family.

This story is a good example of the belief in karma or what comes around goes around. It seems that Ramon didn’t care about anyone until bad shit started happening to him. Then it seems like his conscious kicked him in the ass, and that is when he decided to make some positive changes. But do you think if things went well for Ramon in America from day one, would he be haunted by his guilt, leaving his first family behind?

“Edison, New Jersey” portrays the narrator, Yunior, in his young adulthood. He lives in the United States working as a laborer who delivers and assembles pool tables. He and his older partner, Wayne, go through a series of little adventures and endless trouble with their boss, equipment, or customers.
On one of the deliveries Yunior encounters a young Dominicana girl who works as a housemaid on live-in bases. Because of her physical attractiveness and the amount of gadgets in her room we learn that she’s more of a playgirl, mascot, or even a kind of property of a rich white man rather than just his employee. Yunior caves in and drives the girl to New York who claims to be fed up with her boss and current lifestyle. He imagines that because of their common cultural background they’d be able to connect, but his attempts ultimately fail; the girl seems unattached, shallow, indifferent and angry. I think that her short-lived escape is a desperate outcry for independence that she has no idea how to maintain. She becomes quickly disillusioned with the realities of harsh life in a barrio and comes right back to the comfort zone of her boss’s house where she feels trapped but safe among the fantasies of colored magazines and a yellow wallpaper.
Within the story author also subtly intertwines a motif of his past relationship. He commemorates the ex-girlfriend as someone whom his mother highly approved of and feels like he didn’t stand up to the standards regardless of the amount of stolen money that he used to spend on her. He also mentions that the ex-love’s new boyfriend is “painfully gringo” which points out that Yunior feels betrayed not only on personal but also on socio-cultural level that defines his ethnic and racial identity.
The elements of racial and economic inequalities are present throughout the entire book. In “Edison, New Jersey”, for instance, the author writes, “Most of our customers have names like this, court names (…), but the people from my town, our names, you see on convicts or coupled together on boxing cards” (p.130). The contrast between poor and rich, the differences of lifestyles, attitudes, and prospects are thrown together to emphasize the ambiguity of fate that awaits those who happen to live in the “home of the brave and the land of the free”.
QUESTION: DO YOU THINK THAT THE TITLE WORDS, “EDISON, NEW JERSEY”, SPOKEN BY YUNIOR AT THE END OF THE STORY SIGNIFY SOME KIND OF HOPE OR OUTLOOK FOR AN ADVENTURE OR BETTER TOMORROW?

Question: At some point Yunior's older brother Rafa is replaced by a friend named Cut. Are there any clues as to what happened to Rafa.

"ysrael" is the story of a disfigured boy. He wears a mask to protect his face, however he always has to deal with the name calling and hasseling from other children and grown adults as well.
Rafa and yunior are at their uncles for the summer as usual. They run into ysrael, and they end up knowcking him down to look at his face.

It's a simple coming of age story told through the eyes of yunior or so I assume. This book connects the lives of reoccuring characters into a sort of tim o'brien type novel/set of short stories. I dont personally see this as anything more than a glimpse into the adventures of childhood. Rafa and Yunior out on their own for a bit, away from the uncles.

It was sad though. The fact that ysrael was so disfigured and had hopes of going to a doctor in the states to receive corrective surgery, and at the same time it seemed he might have been lying about it. Perhaps he was hoping that there was a chance that he could recieve that kind of help.

The story ”Aguantando” by Junot Diaz talks mainly about the father of the two boys. There are many discriptions of the mother through Yunior’s eyes. The boy talks about how hard it was for them to survive when his father was away. He talks about the food and clothing, and the entertainment they had living so poor, but trying to go on without noticing it. Yunior mentions that when his mother couldn’t afford his and his brother’s survival, she would send them to the relatives. He mentions that his father is in United States, and plans on returning back to them. This chapter of the book is devoted to tell us about the childhood of Yunior and his brother Rafa, the genesis of their family, the marriage of their parents, their customs, their habits, etc. Beyond the exposition to the family roots and customs, there is a clear link between the mother and Yunior, or maybe the other way around, Yunior with his mother. One would maybe say it is almost like Oedypus complex that Yunior is experiencing. It seems he it utterly in love with her. The way he talks about her is almost romantic. It is beautiful, yet the mother always punishes Yunior for all bad that happens that was not necessarily caused by him. Yunior has his fathers eyes, and it looks like the mother loves the father very much. But the father left them all. He promised once that he’s coming back. But he did not. Again the mother gets the letter that her husband is coming back. The reader can’t really say if she believes him this time.
Yunior tries to imagine how the meeting with hs father will look like. The boy is only 9, and haven’t seen his father for 4 years. But he has the impression like if he never knew his father, and he sticks with this thought.
In my opinion this exerpt of the book shows the complexity of Yunior. It shows how important are for him the family bonds, and how little they mean to Rafa, and maybe even less to the father. I think Yunior dreams of a ”normal” and happy family life, yet he doesn’t know how it looks like. I think Yunior is very mature as for his age, because he sees the frustration of the mother, he almost feels himself all what the mother is going through.
I enjoyed reading the work of Diaz. It is easy reading about complex stuff. I think many of us don’t realize how hard it is to have a family, to raise a family, to life with and far away from it. People don’t think about how it changes one’s view of life, when life ends being a life, but becomes a search. Or when you make a decision you don’t want to make, and then you have to take the consequences. This book shows simple doings of simple people, but in each section of the book the author leaves the reader with some sort of inefficiency. The reader wants to know more, but Diaz cuts it right in the spot, where you want to continue. I think it is a good piece of work. Makes you wonder, and make you feel that you are not the only one out there who suffers living, I guess.

QUESTION: I wonder if Yunior really wants his father to return. There is something about him always wanting to stare at his father’s photographs. I can’t really tell if the boy would be more secure with, or without the father. Do you think he is going through the Oedypus complex, and how does this affect him? Also I wonder how much the book talks about his own life in this book.

Tommy Toth
Response #12
Junot Diaz

The short story Aurora is about Yunior, Cut, and Aurora. Aurora is Yunior’s girl. It’s a story of love and confusion. You start to get the feeling Yunior wants to take Aurora away and give her a different life. People warn him repeatedly that she is bad news, but Yunior ignores them. The story starts out with Cut and Yunior. They are driving to South river for some more dope. They were bagging up the drugs. Yunior was waiting for Auora, and being a Friday she knew they were getting knew drugs. Towards midnight she arrives, but cut does not like her very much. A utility room Cut broke into was where they did drugs and took their woman friends. That is where Yunior met up with Aurora and kissed her. Aurora look thin because she spent six months in the juvie
At the same time, Cut and Yunior are selling drugs. Their not big time dealers, yet Yunior wanted to expand their business. Cut would rather run a smaller operation. Then Aurora and Yunior spend one of their nights getting hi and listening to the couple fight upstairs. Yunior does not spend a lot of time with aurora, since she went to the juvie. Yunior and Aurora used to break into empty apartments for a place to hang. Aurora use to do her fine artwork on the walls.
In addition we meet a character named Harry. Harry is like Aurora brother. He happens to be a drug addict that Yunior and Cut sell to. Aurora is always at the Hacienda with her crack head friends and Junior does not like it.
To add the corner is where it all goes down. Here is where we meet Eggie with the Afro. He used to be Cuts main man but he was not responsible. Now Yunior is in his pathfinder reminiscing. Yunior gets some free food and takes it back to the corner. Here their pissing on Eggie, while he is knocked out in the grass. Aurora mom is getting married. One time Aurora got busted and lied to the cops. Aurora writes to Yunior and sends it to her tia Fresa. When she came back in September Cut warned Yunior to stay away from her. Yunior bumped into her anyways. Yunior asked her, what it was like in juvie and she explained “I hit a couple of girls, she said. Stupid girls. That was a big mistake” wrote Diaz (p.64).

In the story, “Boyfriend,” we are placed in a kind of weird position. As readers we are already observers but in this case we are observers to an observer. This is akin to reality television, but it is also an example of urban living, the kind of experience you can only attain from living in a building with multiple tenants. There have been many occasions in which I have overheard people and their conversations, and on a few occasions, not at home but while at work (which is located on the first floor of a residential building) I have overheard people having sex through the ceiling. This can only happen in apartment living. There is defiantly a sort of freedom that comes with living in an apartment, as opposed to a house or a condo. Having lived in all three I think it is safe to say that while living in an apartment, because there is no sense of ownership, a person is far less reluctant to hold things back, in return you are also far less likely to respect someone’s privacy, especially when they constantly put it out there for the world to see, or as it is in this story, hear.
The story is very voyeuristic, except for the fact that he never actually observes the actions in the apartment with his eyes, but rather his ears. Either way, the narrator is observing their lives from above. Listening in on every fight, their sexual encounters, their simple conversations. From above it is clear to him that they are in the middle of a breakup, with boyfriend constantly coming and going and girlfriend crying frequently. The couple has their rendezvous, meeting on and off throughout the week. The meetings always end with breakup sex, never resulting in the Girlfriend’s desired affect of drawing boyfriend back. Boyfriend seems to have no interest in Girlfriend, while Girlfriend seems to be articulate, always communicating her day and her daily events, but Boyfriend doesn’t say much of anything in the story except, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,” and then later in the story, “Yeah. Yeah.” You begin to get the clear sense that the narrator believes that Boyfriend is not deserving of this Woman, but neither is the narrator. He is envious of Boyfriend that much is clear. He sees him as being good-looking, or as he puts it, “That nigger could have been a model,” but it goes far deeper than looks. Boyfriend seemed to lead a jobless life of leisure, moving from woman to woman with no regard for what he had at home. The Narrator is not envious of this aspect of his life but rather what he had left behind while doing it. At home was this beautiful, “Cleopatra looking Latina,” who was the epitome of what he desired, she even spoke Spanish, which is something that his ex-girlfriend Loretta didn’t even do. I began to think that he had become completely infatuated with the idea of this woman.
Eventually Boyfriend stopped showing up, Girlfriend continued to cry, and the Narrator continued to observer. Throughout the story the Narrator would parallel his breakup with Loretta with that of Boyfriend and Girlfriend, and it becomes clear that he has yet to get over Loretta, and seems to be very lonely. With that in mind he decides to invite Girlfriend over for coffee. She accepts the invitation and comes over for a cup. He tries to impress her with expensive coffee and music but is unfortunately sidetracked by, “the worst gas of my life.” On two occasions he had to excuse himself to the washroom, embarrassed he returned each time to Girlfriend staring at her coffee, both unfazed and unaware. She finds a marijuana seed in the crack of the table and they talk about smoking. He tells her that smoking makes him sleepwalk and she tells him that honey is the cure. She leaves and listens to dance music, and he listens to her listening to the music, picturing her dancing. After they have little interaction, they pass each other in the hall and say hi, this is not to develop in to any sort of relationship be it romantic or just friends, they have become acquaintances in passing.
She gets her haircut and in passing one day, as he returns from the liquor store he says, “Makes you look fierce,” to which she responds, “That’s exactly what I wanted.” That’s where the story ends, as there is no need for any type of continuation between the two. She seems to have begun to move on with her life, changing herself and feeling more confident, while he seems to be up to the same old stuff. In thinking about the story I was trying to figure out what this all meant and then it dawned on me, this story is about machismo. Here you have a woman who was loud and vocal, cried a lot and suffered, put it all out on the table. As compared to a man who instead of grieving over his breakup just kind of hung out and drank. In the end Girlfriend was able to get over the hurt because she hurt while the narrator was not because he held everything in, acting the part of the typical male. Observing life below was a distraction for him, like I said earlier a reality television. Don’t people watch T.V. to escape the real world? What better television is there then watching someone’s struggles. I do believe that eventually everything will turn out ok for the Narrator; his recovery time is simply stunted by his gender.
I liked Junot Diaz’s work a lot. The story you assigned to me lacked some of the ferocity in his other work, but in a good way. With this story he is able to show his range, and his understated characters seemed, at least to me to be, (dare I say it) Carveresque. This is clearly a writer with ability who I am sad to see has not come out with anything since Drown. He has a way with words and his dialogue, which caught me of guard with his lack of punctuation, but his lack of punctuation has made his work very fresh. I have read stories in which writers played with dialog and punctuation but none of that ever moved so fluidly, effortlessly. This was a powerful collection of work that evokes images of an America that most people don’t see.