1. JunotDíaz

2.  “Ysrael”
 “Fiesta, 1980”
 “Aurora”
 “Aguantando”
 “Drown”
 “Boyfriend”
 “Edison, New Jersey”
 “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or
Halfie”
 “No Face”
 “Negocios”

3. The fact that I
am writing to you
in English
already falsifies what I
wanted to tell you.
My subject:
how to explain to you that I don’t belong to English
though I belong nowhere else
Gustavo PérezFirmat

4.  Narrator
 Main characters
 Time & places
 What is the story about?
 What is the narrator’s perspective?
 Which issues come up in this story?

5. Characters:
•narrator Narrator:
•Rafa a child
•Mami
•Tío Miguel &Tía
•Ysrael
•absent father

6. Dominican Ocoa, the “campo”
Republic
a barrio in Santo Domingo,
the Capital
the States
Time
modern times

9.  Loss of innocence in early childhood, sexual abuse, child molestation
 Cruelty, violence
 Prejudices against Haitians in the D.R.
 Migration to the US, the American Dream
 Traditional gender roles, male assertiveness, masculinity
 Poverty, lack of resources, hardship
 A coming of age story
 Dominican identity

10. “Mami’syoungest sister –my tíaYrma-
finally made it to the United States that
year.” (23)

11.  Language/s
 Location/s
 Food
 Sports
 Gender roles
 Music, dancing
 Family ties
 Migration
 Religiosity

12. -from the point of view of a child
-reflexive, nostalgic,
critical, empathic,
detached?
Style, language
1. colloquial
2. bilingual: use of Spanish
3. vulgar
4. formal

13. “Me and Rafa, we didn’t talk much about the Puerto
Rican woman. When we ate dinner at her house, the
few times Papi had taken us over there, we still acted
like nothing was out of the ordinary. Pass the ketchup,
man. No sweat, bro. The affair was like a hole in our
living room floor, one we’d gotten so used
to circumnavigating that we sometimes forgot it was
there.” (39-40)