Drown: The American Dream

In Drown, Junot Diaz depicts diaspora identities in various progressions throughout the featured short stories including the initial yearning to leave the home country, the disappointment once that goal is reached, and the final displacement felt when returning to the home country. Although Drown seems to have no chronological order, it is structured broadly to fit into these progressions, beginning and ending with stories or fragments of stories taking place in the narrator’s homeland and interspersed stories set in the United States in between. McLeod defines diaspora as a relocation of a group of people across the world and cites Robin Cohen in a separate description that a diaspora community “is demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link with their past migration history and a sense of co-ethnicity” (237). Migration to the United States occurs for different reasons, but in the case of Yunior, a primary narrator Drown, the purpose for migration was initially economic then the reunification of his family. In “Yrsael” and “Aguantando”, Yunior focuses on and fantasizes about moving to the United States to be with his father. The short story “Edison, New Jersey” features a possibly different narrator who has been living in the states long enough to have become disenchanted with the experience and has sobered up to reality of an immigrant’s life in the United States. Finally, Yunior’s father returns to his home country of the Dominican Republic in “Negocios” only to find himself feeling like a tourist and completely out of place (198). This story, especially, elaborates on Avtar Brah’s statement that “home is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination” (241). A large part of a diaspora identity is the loss of the feeling of having a home. Migrants are often caught in between. Having an irrevocable connection to their homeland prevents them from fully belonging in their new land; however, the migration in itself has changed them enough that they no longer feel at place in their home countries either. They are left in a purgatory without true acceptance in either culture.

Recently the United States has become a hostile environment for immigrants. Many are treating with unkind stereotypes and prejudices. 

This opposition causes many who immigrate, illegally or legally, to become disenchanted with the American Dream that has been sold to them their entire lives. 

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The treatment many encounter leads immigrants and the descendants of immigrants to seek a home in their place of origin. People find homes in places they have never actually been. 

Jonathan Holloway discusses African diaspora and the return to a figurative home through his travels in Ghana. In Ghana, he visits an old slave castle where he experiences great emotions based on seeing the harrowing conditions and imagining the memories. He relates this "adventure" to his diaspora identity by saying "I didn't want home to be a horror soaked dungeon...but I also know I didn't want home to be a place of second class citizenship." Thousands of people who have immigrated or whose parents or grandparents immigrated undergo this same complication of home.

Discussion Questions:

1. In Drown, women are seen in very traditional roles, such as the mother in “Fiesta”, or as sexual objects. How does the way that female characters are portrayed in Drown compare to females in Lucy? Why do you think the representations are so vastly different?
2. How do the terms “diaspora identities” and “migrant identities” differ (McLeod 238)? Can one exist without the other? Which is the more accurate term when referring to Postcolonial Literature and why?

Fact:  The Dominican Republic, the birthplace of Diaz and the setting to some of his stories, declared its independence in 1844 from Haiti and again in 1865 from the Spanish when they attempted annexation of the nation. This was followed by a series of invasions by the US throughout the 1900s.

Works Cited                                                                                        

 “Dominican Republic Timeline.” World Atlas. n.d. Web. 7 April 2014.

Recommended Literature:
Beginning Postcolonialism, “Diaspora Identities” by John McLeod