Favorite Writing. Junot Diaz "Drown" No. 2

I became a bibliophile for the works of Junot Diaz after a random day flipping pages of “Drown” at a San Jose bookstore.

Diaz has a swift and honest modern voice. His self-abrasive tone won my empathy; and his use of Dominican cultural cues, drew my laughter and interest in his short stories. 

“Drown” is a gathering of scenes on the back of an autobiographic arc.  Diaz explores youth in Dominican Republic (DR) using the first-person narrative. He writes as the younger brother to his nemesis Rafa. He shares bruising words slung at him by Rafa in boyhood wars for verbal one-upmanship. Vibrant and intoxicating images place you in moments with this duo: him at age 9 and Rafa at 12.

Arriving at a remote DR campo to visit their relatives for the summer, they are away from their mother and their Santo Domingo hometown. The brothers turn from being distant to being comrades hunting for fun, san TV and electricity. The youngest also seeks details on transforming from age 9 into his cool, attractive brother -- who brags about his adventures with girls.

A dry, barren landscape has them trapped but Diaz words unleash a masterful, literary tome punctuated with street poetics for readers to explore. He uses form to tell and his experiences to break the ice.

Rafa , who was older and expected more, woke every morning pissy and dissatisfied. He stood out on the patio in his shorts and looked over the mountains, at the mists that gathered like water, at the brucal tress that blazed like fires on the mountain. This, he said, is shit. 

Worse than shit, I said. 

 Yeah, he said, and when I get home, I’m going to go crazy – chinga all my girls and then chinga everyone else’s...  

Tio Miguel had chores for us (mostly we chopped wood for the smokehouse and bright water up from the river) but we finished these as easy as we threw off our shirts, the rest of the day punching us in the face. We caught jaivas in the streams and spent hours walking across the valley to see girls who were never there; we set traps for jurones we never caught and toughened up our roosters with pails of cold water. We worked hard at keeping busy. 

"Drown" short stories – Junot Diaz, Riverhead Books, 1996