Junot Diaz

Drown

Junot Díaz

A critically acclaimed debut collection of ten cynical and sentimental stories captures the bleakness of life, first in the Dominican Republic and then in New Jersey suburbia, for immigrants of color. Reprint.

Melody Izard

This caught me by surprise. I just finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and as a bonus the audio book I was listening to included this collection of short stories by Junot Díaz. I began to listen and quickly (and I’ll have to add, rather flippantly) decided that it wasn’t as good as the novel I had just finished. But as I was pulled in, or more appropriately, submerged into these stories which begin in the DR and move to the inner city communities of New Jersey I was captivated and might now have to say that these are BETTER than the book. Oh we get more of the same, more dads that clearly love their kids but just have a damn silly and often times brutal way of showing it; more women who flip between being strong and weak as they try to stand up to their abusing male partners, but only after a round of heated sex; and more of the mysterious facelessness but this time VERY literal facelessness (faces devoured by a pig no less). But these stories seem to peel back the skin of the narrator (or at least rip off the mommy-made mask) so that we see the old scars and the wounds that haven’t healed. And it’s not entirely unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.

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