"Mami shipped me and Rafa out to the campo every summer. She worked long hours at the chocolate factory and didn't have the time or the energy to look after us during the months school was out. Rafa and I stayed with our tíos, in a small wooden house just outside Ocoa; rosebushes blazed around the yard like compass points and the mango trees spread out deep blankets of shade where we could rest and play dominos, but the campo was nothing like our barrio in Santo Domingo. In the campo there was nothing to do, no one to see. You didn't get television or electricity and Rafa, who was older and expected more, woke up every morning pissy and dissatisfied. He stood out on the patio in his shorts and looked out over the mountains, at the mists that gathered like water, at the brucal trees that blazed like fires on the mountain. This, he said, is shit."
This passage comes early in "Ysrael" as Yunior sets the scene of the story for the readers. It is notable because of the sharp contrast between the abundant natural beauty that surround Rafa and Yunior in the campo and their extreme discontent with their situation. The splendor of the natural world stretches out over several musical lines, but Rafa's succinct statement at the end of the quote—"this is shit"—sums up how he feels about their situation. The campo paradoxically offers a wealth of beauty but also severely limits the boys, who feel understimulated with "nothing to do, no one to see." This passage also helps to acquaint a reader who does not come from the Dominican Republic to the diverse kinds of environments that can be found within the country. As Yunior explains, the campo is starkly different from Santo Domingo, where it is implied that the boys have access to electricity, television, and a stimulating social life.
The theme of poverty extends throughout Drown, where it affects the characters both in the Dominican Republic and in the United States, where they are often forced to live in underprivileged communities with a severely limited quality of life. This leads to a feeling of discontent in the characters because of their living situations in both the Dominican Republic and in the United States. As a result, Díaz challenges the imaginary narrative of the "American Dream," which suggests that immigrants moving to the United Sates will quickly be able to assimilate into American culture and gain status and wealth. It also pushes back against narratives which paint the United States as more "developed" or "advanced" than Caribbean countries such as the Dominican Republic.
"In the kitchen I could hear my parents slipping into their usual modes. Papi's voice was loud and argumentative; you didn't have to be anywhere near him to catch his drift. And Mami, you had to put cups to your ears to hear hers. I went to the kitchen a few times—once so the tíos could show off how much bullshit I'd been able to cram into my head the last few years; another time for a bucket-sized cup of soda. Mami and Tía were frying tostones and the last of the pastelitos. She appeared happier now and the way her hands worked on our dinner you would think she had a life somewhere else making rare and precious things. She nudged Tía now and then, shit they must have been doing all their lives."
In this passage, Yunior describes the gender roles that his father and mother fulfill within their family. His masculine father takes up the space of the kitchen so that his voice can be heard by everyone. In contrast, Mami speaks very quietly, allowing the sounds in the kitchen to be filled by her husband instead. Additionally, while Papi chats with their friends, Mami fulfills the duty of cooking for the rest of the party with Tía Yrma. They move comfortably around each other, suggesting that they have done this together many times before. Mami feels contented with this task, and Yunior describes her process of cooking as if she had another life "making rare and precious things." This other life that Yunior imagines for his mother reveals the love that he has for her and does not carry the connotations of a specific gender role. Instead, they express the power that Mami holds in Yunior's eyes as an almost magical presence in his life.
"LUCERO
I would have named it after you, she said. She folded my shirt and put it on the kitchen counter. Nothing in the apartment, only us naked and some beer and half a pizza, cold and greasy. You're named after a star.
This was before I knew about the kid. She kept going on like that and finally I said, What the fuck are you talking about?
She picked the shirt up and folded it again, patting it down like this had taken some serious effort. I'm telling you something. Something about me. What you should be doing is listening."
This passage comes from the middle of "Aurora," as Lucero reveals more and more information to the reader about his relationship with his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Aurora. In this scene, Aurora reveals to Lucero that she was once pregnant with his child, but it is not until after the fact that he realizes what she was saying to him. Lucero describes this moment in his typical off-handed, matter-of-fact tone as a narrator, and does not explain to us how he reacts emotionally to Aurora's news.
This moment is notable for several reasons. First, readers of "Aurora" learn Lucero's name for the very first time. Second, it reveals to us that when Aurora wrote to Lucero that she wasn't getting her period in juvie, it was because she was pregnant with his baby (62-3). However, Aurora does not come right out and say it; instead she skirts around the issue, leading to Lucero's confusion. Lucero's confusion tells us a little bit about his personality—perhaps he is not very insightful, or he is purposefully naïve—but it also adds depth to Aurora's admission at the end of the story that she dreamed about having a family with Lucero while in solitary confinement (65).
Finally, this passage satirizes the traditional gender roles that are often reinforced in domestic life. As Aurora thinks about carrying Lucero's baby, she performs a domestic task: "She folded my shirt and put it on the kitchen counter." Lucero emphasizes the futility of Aurora's movement towards domesticity because there was "nothing in the apartment" and she was folding his dirty shirt. However, Aurora repeats her action—"She picked up the shirt and folded it again, patting it down like this had taken some serious effort"—suggesting that this task is for her own benefit more than it is for Lucero. Doing this task constitutes a "serious effort" for Aurora because her non-normative life does not easily fit into such a normative fantasy. It's important to remember that at the time of the events in the story, Aurora is "barely seventeen" (53). She is also homeless and addicted to drugs. The story leads us to assume (especially through the inclusion of Cut's girlfriend's son, who is ravenously hungry) that if Aurora were to have a baby, it would result in a bad situation for herself and for the child. Which is why, the reader knows, the domestic fantasy that Aurora envisions will probably never come true. Instead, Lucero and Aurora will be stuck in their cycle of drug consumption and physical abuse.
"Rafa used to think that he'd come in the night, like Jesus, that one morning we'd find him at our breakfast table, unshaven and smiling. Too real to be believed. He'll be taller, Rafa predicted. North American food makes people that way. He'd surprise Mami on her way back from work, pick her up in a German car. Say nothing to the man walking her home. She would not know what to say and neither would he. They'd drive down to the Malecón and he'd take her to see a movie, because that's how they met and that's how he'd want to start it again.
I would see him coming from my trees. A man with swinging hands and eyes like mine. He'd have gold on his fingers, cologne on his neck, a silk shirt, good leather shoes. The whole barrio would come out to greet him. He'd kiss Mami and Rafa and shake Abuelo's reluctant hand and then he'd see me behind everyone else. What's wrong with that one? he'd ask and Mami would say, He doesn't know you. Squatting down so that his pale yellow dress socks showed, he'd trace the scars on my arms and on my head. Yunior, he'd finally say, his stubbled face in front of mine, his thumb tracing a circle on my cheek."
The passage above come from the last moments of "Aguantando," a story in which a nine-year-old Yunior reflects on his life in the Dominican Republic and his father's absence. In these lines, Yunior and Rafa imagine what it would be like for Papi to finally come home. Throughout the story, Yunior reveals how his family has been affected by Papi's absence in their lives, particularly Mami, who is left having to provide for and take care of Rafa and Yunior herself. "Aguantando" tells us that Papi once told Mami that he was coming three years prior when Yunior was six. Mami threw a party in anticipation for his arrival, but he never arrived. Three years later, when Papi sends another letter, the family doesn't know how to react. As Rafa's predictions demonstrate, Papi develops a larger-than-life presence in his family's minds through his absence. Rafa believes that Papi will simply show up one morning when no one is expecting him, "like Jesus," and that he will be "too real to be believed." These lines powerfully communicate the tenuous existence that Papi holds in Yunior and Rafa's lives: they only interact with him through memory and stories, never in person. The transition that Papi will make from imagined presence to real man will, understandably, take some getting used to for both of the children.
Rafa's prediction that Papi will be taller foreshadows the changes that the family will go through once they make it to the United States, as described in "Fiesta, 1980." Mami gains weight in the US because of the food, and they own a lime-green VW car. In this way, there is an overarching cyclical pattern at work in the narrative of Drown. The boys dream about the future, and when it comes, it is remarkably similar to the stories they told themselves in the past. The fact that Rafa's imagination of Papi's re-entry into their lives includes him taking Mami out like he did on their first day echoes this cyclical force. Like Rafa, Yunior believes that Papi will return to Santo Domingo a changed man. His clothes will reflect the richness that he is assumed to be enjoying in the United States: "He'd hand gold on his fingers, cologne on his neck, a silk shirt, good leather shoes." These pieces of clothing are starkly different from the clothing that Yunior and Rafa wear because of their poverty in Santo Domingo. As Yunior will come to realize at other points in Drown, however, they will experience poverty in the United States just like they experienced poverty in Santo Domingo, even though it will be slightly different.
Yunior's prediction of what Papi's homecoming will look like is notable because of the similarities he imagines that he shares with Papi: "A man with swinging hands and eyes like mine." It is notable that Yunior's name is the same as his father's—"Yunior" simply is a spanglish version of "Junior." The changes of height in these lines reflect the implied equivalence between Yunior and his father. When Papi first arrives, Yunior imagines that he will be perched high above him in the trees. Once they are face to face, however, it is Papi who is taller, and he squats down to look Yunior in the eyes. This passage is particularly evocative because it ends on a note of tender physical contact between Yunior and his father: "Yunior, he'd finally say, his stubbled face in front of mine, his thumb tracing a circle on my cheek." In Yunior's imagination, Papi claims Yunior as his offspring and reacts towards him with love. This is a sharp contrast to the relationship that we see between Yunior and his father in "Fiesta, 1980," which is rife with tension. In that story, whenever Papi touches Yunior, it is done with force in order to discipline him.
"Days we spent in the mall or out in the parking lot playing stickball, but nights were what we waited for. The heat in the apartments was like something heavy that had come inside to die. Families arranged on their porches, the glow from their TV's washing blue against the brick. From my family apartment you could smell the pear trees that had been planted years ago, four to a court, probably to save us all from asphyxiation. Nothing moved fast, even the daylight was slow to fade, but as soon as night settled Beto and I headed down to the community center and sprang the fence into the pool. We were never alone, every kid with legs was there. We lunged from the boards and swam out of the deep end, wrestling and farting around. At around midnight abuelas, with their night hair swirled around spiky rollers, shouted at us from their apartment windows."
This paragraph comes early in "Drown," when Yunior reflects on his adolescence. It effectively sets the scene for the rest of the story and gives us a sense of what Yunior's life is like while he goes to high school. Papi has left the family and is living with another woman in Florida. He calls Mami every so often asking for money. She pays the rent and provides for herself and Yunior by working as a housekeeper.
The descriptive language in this passage highlights the unique struggles that come from Yunior's environment in New Jersey. He describes the poverty that he and his mother live in without naming it exactly as such, and comments on external factors such as heat to show how he feels about his surroundings: "The heat in the apartments was like something heavy that had come inside to die." In this line, Díaz uses a simile to associate the heat with something negative and morbid rather than something positive. This affects our perception of the speaker's environment. Morbidity and death appears again in the following line, when Yunior notes that he can smell the pear trees from his apartment. According to Yunior, the pear trees had been planted "probably to save us all from asphyxiation." The unknown entity that planted these trees—if they live in government housing, perhaps it was the city government; if they do not, perhaps it was an organizational body such as an HOA—does so because without them, the heat inside of the apartments would be too much to bear. Yunior's assumption that without them they would die from asphyxiation is probably hyperbolic. Nevertheless, it represents the quality of life that Yunior and his neighbors suffer through in their neighborhood—one that seems out of their control.
"He wasn't sticking around, though. That was obvious. He was one of those dark-skinned smooth-faced brothers that women kill for, and I knew for a fact, having seen his ass in action at the local spots, that he liked to get over on the white girls. She didn't know nothing about his little Rico Suave routine. It would have wrecked her. I used to think those were the barrio rules, Latinos and blacks in, whites out—a place we down cats aren't supposed to go. But love teaches you. Clears your head of any rules. Loretta's new boy was Italian, worked on Wall Street. When she told me about him we were still going out. We were on the Promenade and she said to me, I like him. He's a hard worker.
No amount of heart-leather could stop something like that from hurting.
After one of their showers, Boyfriend never came back. No phone calls, no nothing. She called a lot of her friends, ones she hadn't spoken to in the longest. I survived through my boys; I didn't have to call out for help. It was easy for them to say, Forget her sellout ass. That's not the sort of woman you need. Look how light you are—no doubt she was already shopping for the lightest."
This passage demonstrates the mirroring between the narrator and the Girlfriend in "Boyfriend." Throughout the story, he listens from his apartment as she mourns her breakup with Boyfriend. Throughout these scenes, the narrator and Girlfriend mirror each other's actions: when she is in the bathroom, he goes to the bathroom right above hers in order to hear her better. When she cries over Boyfriend, he thinks about his own breakup with Loretta. Loretta's way of dealing with her breakup—reaching out to old friends on the phone—mirrors the narrator's own healing process, when he surrounded himself with his friends.
As the passage above shows us, the circumstances of their breakup are also remarkably similar. The narrator suggests that one of the reasons Boyfriend left Girlfriend is because he prefers to seek out white girls at the local bars. The narrator previously thought that those kinds of relationships weren't the way that the world works: "I used to think those were the barrio rules, Latinos and blacks in, whites out." However, it was his relationship with Loretta who opened his eyes. She left the narrator for a white Italian who works on Wall Street. The theme of race is apparent in these lines: both the narrator and Girlfriend are less desirable in the eyes of Boyfriend and Loretta than white people.
"Everything in Washington Heights is Dominican. You can't go a block without passing a Quisqueya Bakery or a Quisqueya Supermercado or a Hotel Quisqueya. If I were to park the truck and get out nobody would take me for a deliveryman; I could be the guy who's on the street corner selling Dominican flags. I could be on my way home to my girl. Everybody's on the streets and the merengue's falling out of windows like TVs."
This moment comes from the end of "Edison, New Jersey." The narrator has taken Pruitt's housekeeper back home to Washington Heights. Like the narrator, she is Dominican. The narrator moved to the United States when he was young, though, and she has just arrived. This passage stands out because of the beauty that the narrator sees in his surroundings. Throughout Drown, particularly in the stories that are set in urban New Jersey such as "Aurora," "Boyfriend," and "Drown," the descriptions of their environments are often tinged in a negative light. See, for example, quote #5, in which Yunior describes his neighborhood while he is growing up with Beto. As explained underneath that quote, the descriptive language that Yunior chooses to describe his environment shows his true feelings about it. In contrast, the narrator enjoys being in Washington Heights, and it gives him the opportunity to imagine himself in a better life: "If I were to park the truck and get out nobody would take me for a deliveryman... I could be on my way home to my girl." The result is a celebration of Washington Heights as a Dominican neighborhood that connects the narrator to his culture and makes him feel at home.
"Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. If the girl's from the Terrace stack the boxes behind the milk. If she's from the Park of Society Hill hide the cheese in the cabinet above the oven, way up where she'll never see. Leave yourself a reminder to get it out before morning or your moms will kick your ass. Take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the campo, especially the one with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope leash. The kids are your cousins and by now they're old enough to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Hide the pictures of yourself with an Afro. Make sure the bathroom is presentable. Put the basket with all the crapped-on toilet paper under the sink. Spray the bucket with Lysol, then close the cabinet."
This passage comes from the opening of "How to Date." In the story, Yunior is advising an unknown reader (who is assumed to be male) on how to change aspects of their personality and behavior according to who they are dating. Where the girl comes from determines what kinds of changes must be made. For example, if the girl is from Yunior's apartment building, then all the reader has to do is "stack the boxes behind the milk." However, if she's from out of town, it's best to "hide the cheese in the cabinet above the oven, way up where she'll never see." Yunior alludes to his childhood in the Dominican Republic when he advises the reader to "take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the campo, especially the one with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope on a leash." Interestingly, the stories that we get from Yunior in the Dominican Republic, "Ysrael" and "Aguantando," do not mention any cousins at all—instead, we just get descriptions of Yunior and Rafa's aunts and uncles, particularly Tío Miguel and Tía Yrma.
As Marisel Moreno points out in "Debunking Myths, Destabilizing Identities: A Reading of Junot Díaz's 'How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie,'" the changes that Yunior makes in order to affect how these girls see him reflects an understanding that identity is not set in stone: "The protagonist's choice to emphasize and/or undermine certain aspects of his ethnic, racial, class, and gender identities, problematizes fixed notions of identity and illustrates that identity can be fluid and situational." In this way, Yunior is aware that he can control how his love interests perceive him and attempts to control those perceptions to the best of his abilities. The result is a version of Yunior that is not completely authentic on the outside but also a narrative that clearly expresses his true feelings about himself and his situation in life.
"He watches for opportunities from corners, away from people. He has the power of INVISIBILITY and no one can touch him. Even his tío, the one who guards the dams, scrolls past and says nothing. Dogs can smell him though and a couple nuzzle his feet. He pushes them away since they can betray his location to his enemies. So many wish him to fall. So many wish him gone."
This passage comes from "No Face," which is the only story told from Ysrael's point of view in Drown. This passage is notable because of how Ysrael sees himself and his disability: instead of getting down about the fact that he is tormented by and ostracized from most of his community, he understands part of his disability as a kind of superpower. "He has the power of INVISIBILITY," he says, which means that "no one can touch him." In the same breath, he gives us an indication of how his neighbors treat him. Ysrael is shunned from his community to such an extent that not even his uncle greets him when he passes him on the street: "Even his tío, the one who guards the damns, scrolls past and says nothing." The only beings that acknowledge Ysrael's existence are dogs, but they put him at risk, because they call attention to him. As Tobien Siebers notes in "Words Stare Like a Glass Eye: From Literary to Visual to Disability Studies and Back Again," Ysrael's mask is somewhat of a double-edged sword: "The thin blue cotton face cover, like the mask of invisibility described in mythology or comic books, renders Ysrael 'INVISIBLE.' Paradoxically, it both conceals and reveals his disability."
"The air must have seemed thin then, and the sun like a fire in his hair, sending trickles of sweat down his face. He must have seen people he knew. Jayson was sitting glumly at his colmado, a solider turned grocer. Chico, gnawing at a chicken bone, at his feet a row of newly shined shoes. Maybe Papi stopped there and couldn't go on, maybe he went as far as the house, which hadn't been painted since his departure. Maybe he even stopped at our house and stood there, waiting for his children out front to recognize him.
In the end, he never visited us. If Mami heard from her friends that he was in the city, with his other wife, she never told us about it. His absence was a seamless thing to me. And if a strange man approached me during my play and stared down at me and my brother, perhaps asking our names, I don't remember it now."
This incredibly evocative passage comes from when Papi has returned to Santo Domingo with Nilda in "Negocios." He has not told his first family that he has remarried nor that he is visiting their city. Yunior knows years later that he had been there, but at the time, he was clueless to his father's presence. As a result, his imagining of Papi's visit is often in the hypothetical: he does not know for sure what his father did in Santo Domingo. In this way, this passage is remarkably similar to the ending of "Aguantando" (above). Yunior knows his father enough to be able to predict what he might have done, but the truth of what happened is lost to memory. He will never truly know. There is a melancholy mood beating beneath these lines, as the estranged father and children come so close to seeing each other but Yunior does not realize it. In "Aguantando," Yunior tells us that he cannot remember his father because he left when Yunior was so young.
