Summary Of Junot Diaz's Drown

Drown, written by Junot Diaz, is a collection of ten short stories that explores the struggle of Dominican Republic immigrants in the United States to achieve the American Dream. In Drown, the character Yunior struggles to negotiate the differences between the Dominican and American cultures. In order to illustrate this constant struggle, Junot Diaz uses Spanish words amidst his English to show how the cultural dissimilarities between America and the Dominican Republic marginalizes those who do not speak English. For example, in the Dominican Republic, Yunior is portrayed as an individual who embraces the language of his culture. This is evident with his regular usage of Spanish words. For example, in “Ysrael,” Yunior states, “The next morning the roosters were screaming. Rafa dumped the ponchera in the weeds and then collected our shoes from the patio, careful not to step on the pile of cacao beans Tia had set out to dry” (Diaz, 9). Yunior’s usage of Spanish words amidst the English phrases pulls the audience into the native country of the narrator. Contrastingly, in America, Yunior suppresses his Dominican
In the skit of “First Black Man to Use a White Toilet,” Chappelle introduces us to the tale of Cyrus Halloway, the first black man to take a dump in a whites-only toilet (Chappelle, 2004). While Chappelle’s fecal-humor, as noted by his witty remarks about “the nation’s first shit-in,” causes the audience to laugh hysterically and maintain engagement with the story’s plotline, the bigger purpose of this sketch is to inform the ways in which the public conceptualize race through the commentary about the historical Jim Crow laws in the