Junot Diaz
 Junot Diaz was born in Santa Domingo, Dominican
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Republic
Came to the United States in December 1974 and lived
in Parlin, New Jersey
Is a Professor of creative writing at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Became the First Latino to be appointed to the Pulitzer
Prize board of Jurors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq0hytHV8o4
Opening quote
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
Ysrael
Characters:
 Yunior- the whole book is from his perspective. In this
story he is nine years old, still in the Dominican
Republic
 Rafa- Yunior’s older brother
 Tio- When times get hard, Mami sends the boys to live
with their uncle in el campo
 Absent father- Living and working in the US
 Ysrael- A boy whose face was eaten off by a pig when
he was a baby
Ysrael
 Rafa and Yunior are in el campo with their uncle for
the summer
 Rafa keeps talking about Ysrael. He is obsessed with
getting a look at Ysrael’s face.
 Finally one day they take a bus to Ysrael’s
neighborhood
 Rafa knocks him out and looks at his face
Ysrael
 Identity
 Ysrael’s face = loss of identity
 Rafa is obsessed with getting a look
 Masculinity
 Yunior looks for validation from his older brother
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Always listens to Rafa’s stories
Thrilled when Rafa brings him along
Likes going to el campo because he and Rafa are friends there
 “Pato” on the bus
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Yunior tells the man to leave him alone
When they get off the bus, he starts to cry
Rafa calls him a pussy, tells him he needs to get tougher
 Yunior is more sensitive than Rafa
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Acts like he wants to be Ysrael’s friend
Doesn’t really want to look at his face
When Tia told them that seeing Ysrael’s face would make you feel sad
forever, Yunior didn’t want to feel sad forever.
Fiesta, 1980
Characters
 Tia Yrma – Yuniors Aunt, recently moved into the
bronx with Tio Miguel
 Puerto Rican Woman- having an affair with Yunior’s
father, Rafa also knows about her
 Yunior’s Dad – Tough and abusive, is having an affair,
always yelling at Yunior
Fiesta, 1980
 Tia Yrma and Tio Miguel move to the U.S. and are
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living in the Bronx off Grand Concourse
Everybody decides to have a party for their arrival
Yunior gets car sick a lot so his dad refuses to let him
eat at the party.
While at the party he thinks back on the time he met
the Puerto Rican woman.
He thinks about his mom and whether or not she
knows
Fiesta, 1980
Masculinity and Sexuality
 Yunior gets his ideas of masculinity from His brother, father and Uncle
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Yunior hears from his uncle that if he were in the Dominican Republic
he would be drinking already and would have even gotten laid already.
Rafa makes Yunior stand guard at the party while his brother is with
Leti
His dad is having an affair with another woman and brings Yunior to
her house while he goes upstairs with her
Yunior is always getting yelled at and punished by his father, he even
writes a school essay called My Father The Torturer
Aurora
Characters:
 Yunior- Living in the US
 Cut- Yunior’s friend and drug-dealing partner
 Aurora- A junkie that Yunior is involved with
Aurora
 Yunior and his friend Cut go to pick up more drugs
 That night Aurora comes by their apartment
 Yunior spends the night with her, but when he wakes up he
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finds that she went through his pockets and left.
Yunior and Cut go out and deal drugs
Yunior and Aurora abuse each other, but they can’t seem to
stay away from each other
Yunior goes to hang out with his friends
Hints that Aurora had a baby, but remains unclear
Aurora went to juvie. Yunior didn’t write to her. They got
back together when she got out.
Aurora
Disorientation/Confusion:
 “I’ve found these notes… Bullshit mostly but every now
and then she leaves one that makes me want to treat
her better” p. 48
 “We all do shit like this, stuff that’s no good for you.
You do it and then there’s no feeling positive about it
afterwards” p. 50
 “After, when she’s picking at my back and the others in
the next room have started talking again, I’m amazed
at how nasty I feel, how I want to put my fist in her
face” p. 55
Aurora
Disorientation/Confusion:
 “We’re all under the big streetlamps, everyone’s the color of
day-old piss. When I’m fifty this is how I’ll remember my
friends: tired and yellow and drunk” p. 57
 “If something inside of me is saying no, why do I say, Yeah,
sure?” p. 59
 “I’m thinking how easy it would be for her to turn around
and say, Hey, let’s go home. I’d put my arm around her and
I wouldn’t let her go for like fifty years, maybe not ever. I
know people who just quit like that, who wake up one day
with bad breath and say, No more. I’ve had enough” p.61
Aurora
Disorientation/Confusion:
 “A week from then she would be asking me again,
begging actually, telling me all the good things we’d do
and after a while I hit her and made the blood come
out of her ear like a worm but right then, in that
apartment, we seemed like we were normal folks. Like
maybe everything was fine” p. 65
Aguantando
 Yunior – only nine years old
 Abuelo – Lives in the house helps take care of the kids
 Rafa – older brother
 Tía Miranda –Yunior’s Madrina (Godmother. He only
stays with her when times get harder and his mom
doesn’t have anymore money
Aguantando
 Yunior talks about the times he grew up in DR with out
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his father present and how poor they were.
Mom worked ten 12-hour shifts to support them.
Abuelo helped take care of them but didn’t actually
work for money.
They lived in a small house with a leaky roof and the
only thing that was kept safe was the pictures of his
dad in a plastic bag.
Yunior had never met his father before.
Aguantando
 His father usually writes letters to the family and
recently wrote to tell them he was coming back. This
gets his mom in such a bad mood because his father
said that once before and never showed up.
 He describes how she changed following that and went
away for 5 weeks
 When she came back she was a new person brighter
and happier
 He only knows of his father by the things his mother
tells him such as how they met.
Aguantando
 This is basically about Yunior wanting to know his
father and how his absence effects them.
 He see how much his mother is hurt by it but still
wants to know his father. He even throws a tantrum
until his mother can’t take it anymore.
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
Drown
 Mother tells Yunior that Beto is back and wants to see him
 Beto left for college and Yunior stayed behind
 Yunior goes to the pool in the middle of the night, half
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expecting to see Beto there
Mother doesn’t understand why Yunior and Beto don’t
hang out anymore
Yunior takes his mother to the mall. It’s one of the only
times she leaves the apartment
Yunior and Beto used to shoplift together
Army recruiter once tried to recruit Yunior
Yunior skipped out of school a lot
Beto and Yunior had two homosexual encounters
Drown
 “The water feels good. Starting at the deep end I glide over
the slick-tiled bottom without kicking up a spume or
making a splash. Sometimes another swimmer churns past
me, more a disturbance of water than a body. I can still go
far without coming up. While everything above is loud and
bright, everything below is whispers” p. 93
 “I take to the bushes when I see his car on the road. These
days my guts feel loose and cold and I want to be away from
here. He won’t have to show me his Desert Eagle or flash
the photos of the skinny Filipino girls sucking dick. He’ll
only have to smile and name the places and I’ll listen” p. 101
Drown
 “Sometimes Alex will stop by the side of the road and
say, Excuse me. When somebody comes over from the
bar he’ll point his plastic pistol at them, just to see if
they’ll run or shit their pants. Tonight he just puts his
head out the window. Fuck you! he shouts and then
settles back in his seat, laughing” p. 103 masculinity,
homophobia
 “We sat in front of his television, in our towels, his
hands bracing against my abdomen and thighs. I’ll
stop if you want, he said and I didn’t respond. After I
was done, he laid his head in my lap. I wasn’t asleep or
awake, but caught somewhere in between, rocked
slowly back and forth by the way surf holds junk
against the shore, rolling it over and over” p. 105
Drown
 “I thought of how in high school our teachers loved to
crowd us into their lounge every time a space shuttle
took off from Florida. One teacher, whose family had
two grammar schools named after it, compared us to
the shuttles. 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 the desk. I could already see myself losing
altitude, fading, the earth spread out beneath me,
hard and bright” p. 106
Drowning
 The book jumps around from one period to another
within Yunior’s life
 Things are often undefined; some stories barely even
have a plot