This Is How You Lose It: Navigating Dominicanidad in Junot Díaz’s Drown
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2016
Keywords
immigration literature, Dominican American identity, narrative of loss
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822374763-007
Abstract
This chapter analyzes Díaz’s work through his critique of U.S. neocolonialism. His attention to classism, intraethnic racism, and internalized racism illustrates Drown’s effectiveness as what the chapter terms a narrative of loss. Díaz’s text grapples with the immediate, measurable losses associated with immigration: loss of a physical home, loss of family, loss of language. His principal narrator, Yunior de las Casas, illustrates the psychocultural migration intrinsic to people who are stuck in a narrative of loss. The stories in Drown are striking examples of contemporary Dominican immigrant narratives wherein characters must navigate the riptides of cultural identity. Because identity construction in Anglo- and Latino/a America is deceptively narrow, Yunior illustrates how one must swim entirely out of them or drown between them.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
This Is How You Lose It: Navigating Dominicanidad in Junot Díaz’s Drown, in M. Hanna, J. H. Vargas & J. D. Saldivar (Eds.), Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imagination, Duke University Press, p. 189-225
Scholar Commons Citation
Irizarry, Ylce, "This Is How You Lose It: Navigating Dominicanidad in Junot Díaz’s Drown" (2016). English Faculty Publications. 275.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/eng_facpub/275
