Week 1-Thurs Junot Díaz Drown Class Notes

Junot Díaz is the author of Drown (1996), a collection of short stories, and of the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on December 31, 1968.

He has two brothers and two sisters. Growing up, Díaz and his siblings lived in Santo Domingo with their mother while Díaz’s father went to the United States to work.

His father sent for his family when Díaz was seven. Their family lived in a poor part of New Jersey populated primarily by Dominicans.

Diaz uses his life experiences in his writing

Díaz reports that his grades in high school were awful.

He did however spend a lot of time reading everything he could find in the library.

He also wrote a Stephen King-esque novel that he says was “garbage.” Díaz worked various jobs before becoming a writer, including working at a steel mill and delivering pool tables.

Díaz is known for his spare narrative style, and his seamless integration of Spanish into his English text.

A“coming of age” narrative- Bildungsroman

A novel or story in which an adolescent protagonist comes to adulthood by a process of experience and disillusionment.

This character loses his or her innocence,

discovers that previous preconceptions are false,

or has the security of childhood torn away,

but usually matures and strengthens by this process.

Autobiographical fiction

Reviewers often categorize these types of works as “autobiographical fiction” because the author uses:

thematic development (as opposed to simple chronological listing of their life’s events);

and other techniques common to fiction such as using metaphors;

authors such as Diaz attempt to critique, change, and expand the older, more traditional view of what characterizes an “autobiography”.

(Same with next work, Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings).

(They are preparing us to think about our families’ stories for your papers.)

Metaphors

A comparison or analogy that uses one thing to stand in figuratively for the image of another idea

Example: When we speak of "the ladder of success," we imply that being successful is much like climbing a ladder to a higher and better position. We are not literally climbing a real ladder.

What are some of the metaphors for Diaz’s unnamed protagonists’ working class surroundings and ethnic position in terms of social status?

Junot Diaz

Both Drown and his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao explore the different kinds of violence that occur on an everyday basis in the lives of the characters.

In the wake of the novel, Díaz has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize.

Díaz is a professor of Creative Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lives in Boston.

Became the First Latino to be appointed to the Pulitzer Prize board of Jurors.

This is the original book cover for Drown. What does it depict? Then, we will compare this one with the new book cover (see in the next slide). What is the difference in what they convey?

This is the more recent
book cover. Different feel? What does it convey? Is the young recently-immigrated protagonist “drowning” in different ways?

Opening quote in Drown – What does it mean?

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

                Gustavo Perez Firmat

Award-winning Cuban American poet and scholar. One memoir, Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano's Coming-of-Age in America (Doubleday 1995)

Drown

Characters:

Yunior- Living in the US with only his mother now

Mother- Quiet and lost, misses Yunior’s father

Beto- Yunior’s old friend

Alex and Danny- The guys Yunior drinks with at night

Recruiter- Tries to recruit Yunior for the Army

Father- Only present in flash-backs and when Yunior’s mother talks to him on the phone. Lives in Florida now with another woman

The book moves around from one period to another within Yunior’s life.