[reviews]
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Junot Diaz, Drown
reviewed by Adrienne Brockhaus
There is a rhythm to Junot Diaz's sentences into which readers can't help but fall. Ten pages into his short story collection Drown, Diaz's voice almost seems to pump through you as if it were your own. The Spanish and Dominican expressions come naturally in a running narration, which does indeed seem to be running (or at least jogging) up and down the streets of the Dominican Republic, New Jersey and New York. It is this voice, Diaz's voice, that with one sweeping, sobering glance ties together the ten short stories into a graceful, unified collection.
Drown, Diaz's first book, focuses on the life history of its narrator, Yunior, a Dominican immigrant who recounts growing up first under the weight of a predominantly absent father in Santo Domingo, and subsequently under the weight of a faulty American dream in New Jersey. Yunior's youth is defined by his family. He suffers alongside his saintly Mami who is forced to work nonstop to keep their fatherless family afloat, and under the conceit of his self-assured brother Rafa whose ruthless lack of emotion a sensitive Yunior can't help but idolize. The stories of Yunior's young adulthood shift in focus from family to drugs, sex and theft, as Yunior moves from the Dominican Republic to the United States. While the subject matter is more serious in these later stories, the tone is the same. Yunior simultaneously longs for more and settles for the status quo. His life changes, but never seems to definitively improve, a theme that is reflected in his father's story which is told in the book's last piece "Negocios."
The short stories that comprise Drown are not so much anecdotes as they are broad sketches where the emotional landscape is affected as much by sights, smells and specifics as by flat explanation and actual dialogue. Diaz's application of dialogue is something that technically sets his work apart. He moves seamlessly in and out of his character's quotes in a way that communicates that their statements are more than facts, they're pieces of a memory, of a feeling, of a time. In many ways Diaz's use of dialogue could be seen as a metaphor for the style of Drown overall. Diaz's stories welcome the reader into the Dominican immigrant experience with little-to-no preamble. Yunior claims no official sentiment for the sake of all Dominican Americans; rather, the predominant sentiment communicated in Drown is a much more universal one about the human longing for connection.
The gritty edge of the stories furthermore ties the collection together. Even in the pieces about Yunior's youth, life is painted as being ever so slightly grotesque. For example in the first story of the collection, entitled "Ysrael," Yunior and Rafa hunt down a local masked boy, infamous for having been mutilated by a pig as an infant. The tormented boy exhibits a sad reflection of Yunior, as he as well is isolated and wary but still hopeful for human connection. Reading as ultimately more sad than disturbing, the harsh subject matter is thus used notably as an accent to the dull, dirty, weary lives of its characters.
The organization of the stories is also significant, as many of the pieces in the collection were published previously in magazines. Situations build upon one another in subtle ways. In "Boyfriend" for example, Yunior becomes absorbed in listening to the turbulent relationship of his downstairs neighbors, a relationship where the boyfriend is obviously to blame. In the following story, "Edison, New Jersey," our narrator actually takes action, helping a strange girl physically leave her boyfriend behind. These specific thematic connections are weaved intricately throughout Drown, making it holistically coherent although in no way predictable.
In the end Diaz communicates the peculiar truth of the immigrant experience with an objective honesty and personal sincerity, which makes his stories both convivial and compelling. His artful descriptions and use of slang are reason enough to pick up his book, but the themes about human isolation and longing are equally powerful. Each story is as rewarding to read alone, as the collection is to read together, making Diaz's book, in my opinion, a thorough success.
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Adrienne Brockhaus is an editorial assistant with UpInMichigan.org and a professional writing student at GVSU.
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