An Annotated Bibliography: Drown By Junot Diaz
English 101
An Annotated Bibliography:
Junot Diaz
"Impressions...: Review: Drown by Junot Díaz." Impressions...: Review: Drown by Junot Díaz. N.p., 22 Jan. 2012. Web. 07 Apr. 2015. Drown was the first book Junot Diaz wrote and was composed of ten short stories. Its focus is on the hardships of immigrants in the U.S., specifically those from the Dominican Republic in New Jersey. Some of the stories focus on the same family where as others are unknown who the main character is. “Drown” one of the short stories focuses on a young man avoiding a childhood friend returning to the neighborhood, because he feels as a failure. The focus on how hard it is to assimilate into their new neighborhoods and after a while it seems like they’ll never leave and their idea of living the American dream is ruined. Diaz with a strong voice managed to achieve his goal.
"BOMB: The Author Interviews." Interview by Edwidge Danticat. N.p., Fall 2007. Web. 4 Apr. 2015. <http://bombmagazine.org/article/2948/>. …show more content…
The book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao took Junot Diaz a long time to write not only because he calls himself a slow writer but a crazy perfectionist.
He got the idea for Oscar from the childhood nerds he grew up with, that he felt he would have been a part of if it wasn’t for his father and brother. He wrote in as many side characters as possible some real, some fake, to respond to some of the other books written about the Dominican Republic. The book has a lot of language that some people find offensive like the N-word but he finds a strong difference between representing something and endorsing it. He never felt like he was going to finish the book. After 11 years of writing it might be his happiest accomplishments of his
life.
Taylor, Christopher. The Guardian. The Guardian News and Media, 22 Feb. 2008. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.
Oscar, the main character is a Dominican-American growing up in New Jersey, during the 80s. He has problems with his nerdiness, race and class. Oscar is a major sci-fi and fantasy man, when he goes to college he dresses up as Tom Baker at Halloween, this makes him look like Oscar Wilde. A Dominican accent turns "Wilde" into "Wao". The book shifts timelines many times after this and it doesn’t come back to Oscar’s life till his last trip to Santo Domingo, by this time three generations of his family have been seen. “They 're narrated in a voice that 's exotic in a very different way. This voice, which mixes street talk and dollops of Spanish with heavyweight nerd-speak and literary references.”(1) Díaz is successful at combining the book 's interest in genre to the values in Caribbean culture. He 's remarkably unsparing about "white supremacy and people-of-color self-hate" as well as the continuous political failures of the Dominican Republic.
Cohen, Leah H. "Love Stories." The New York Times. New York Times, 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.
This collection could stand on its own but it presents characters from his first collection such as Yunior. “In the new book, as previously, Díaz is almost too good for his own good.”(1) The book is considered a collection of love stories all with different outlooks but seems to be connected in the difficulty of loving oneself. In one of the stories Yunior and his brother Rafa were not let outside in the snow because their dad didn’t want them too. They were distraught at not being able to go explore their new environment. Later on in his teenage years his lover found out he was unfaithful and went through depression at times.
"Junot Díaz." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Oct. 2012. Web. 07 Apr. 2015. Junot Diaz currently age 43 was born December 31, 1968 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. At age 6, emigrated with mother and four siblings to United States, where his father was working in N.J. He was an avid reader as a kid and would often walk miles to the library. He transferred after a year and graduated from Rutgers in 1992. He currently lives in Cambridge, Mass. Also keeps an apartment in New York City. Has taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2002. Won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics ' Circle award for best novel for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Called one of the top 20 writers for the 21st century by the New Yorker. Still young readers can look forward to more in the future.
An Annotated Bibliography:
Junot Diaz
"Impressions...: Review: Drown by Junot Díaz." Impressions...: Review: Drown by Junot Díaz. N.p., 22 Jan. 2012. Web. 07 Apr. 2015. Drown was the first book Junot Diaz wrote and was composed of ten short stories. Its focus is on the hardships of immigrants in the U.S., specifically those from the Dominican Republic in New Jersey. Some of the stories focus on the same family where as others are unknown who the main character is. “Drown” one of the short stories focuses on a young man avoiding a childhood friend returning to the neighborhood, because he feels as a failure. The focus on how hard it is to assimilate into their new neighborhoods and after a while it seems like they’ll never leave and their idea of living the American dream is ruined. Diaz with a strong voice managed to achieve his goal.
"BOMB: The Author Interviews." Interview by Edwidge Danticat. N.p., Fall 2007. Web. 4 Apr. 2015. <http://bombmagazine.org/article/2948/>. …show more content…
The book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao took Junot Diaz a long time to write not only because he calls himself a slow writer but a crazy perfectionist.
He got the idea for Oscar from the childhood nerds he grew up with, that he felt he would have been a part of if it wasn’t for his father and brother. He wrote in as many side characters as possible some real, some fake, to respond to some of the other books written about the Dominican Republic. The book has a lot of language that some people find offensive like the N-word but he finds a strong difference between representing something and endorsing it. He never felt like he was going to finish the book. After 11 years of writing it might be his happiest accomplishments of his
life.
Taylor, Christopher. The Guardian. The Guardian News and Media, 22 Feb. 2008. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.
Oscar, the main character is a Dominican-American growing up in New Jersey, during the 80s. He has problems with his nerdiness, race and class. Oscar is a major sci-fi and fantasy man, when he goes to college he dresses up as Tom Baker at Halloween, this makes him look like Oscar Wilde. A Dominican accent turns "Wilde" into "Wao". The book shifts timelines many times after this and it doesn’t come back to Oscar’s life till his last trip to Santo Domingo, by this time three generations of his family have been seen. “They 're narrated in a voice that 's exotic in a very different way. This voice, which mixes street talk and dollops of Spanish with heavyweight nerd-speak and literary references.”(1) Díaz is successful at combining the book 's interest in genre to the values in Caribbean culture. He 's remarkably unsparing about "white supremacy and people-of-color self-hate" as well as the continuous political failures of the Dominican Republic.
Cohen, Leah H. "Love Stories." The New York Times. New York Times, 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.
This collection could stand on its own but it presents characters from his first collection such as Yunior. “In the new book, as previously, Díaz is almost too good for his own good.”(1) The book is considered a collection of love stories all with different outlooks but seems to be connected in the difficulty of loving oneself. In one of the stories Yunior and his brother Rafa were not let outside in the snow because their dad didn’t want them too. They were distraught at not being able to go explore their new environment. Later on in his teenage years his lover found out he was unfaithful and went through depression at times.
"Junot Díaz." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Oct. 2012. Web. 07 Apr. 2015. Junot Diaz currently age 43 was born December 31, 1968 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. At age 6, emigrated with mother and four siblings to United States, where his father was working in N.J. He was an avid reader as a kid and would often walk miles to the library. He transferred after a year and graduated from Rutgers in 1992. He currently lives in Cambridge, Mass. Also keeps an apartment in New York City. Has taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2002. Won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics ' Circle award for best novel for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Called one of the top 20 writers for the 21st century by the New Yorker. Still young readers can look forward to more in the future.