Monica Hanna is Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton.
Jennifer Harford Vargas is Assistant Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College.
José David Saldívar is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and the author of
Monica Hanna is Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton.
Jennifer Harford Vargas is Assistant Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College.
José David Saldívar is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and the author of
Monica Hanna is Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton.
Jennifer Harford Vargas is Assistant Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College.
José David Saldívar is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and the author of
This Is How You Lose It: Navigating Dominicanidad in Junot Díaz’s Drown
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Published:January 2016
Ylce Irizarry, 2016. "This Is How You Lose It: Navigating Dominicanidad in Junot Díaz’s Drown", Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imagination, Monica Hanna, Jennifer Harford Vargas, José David Saldívar
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This chapter analyzes Díaz’s work through his critique of U.S. neocolonialism. His attention to classism, intraethnic racism, and internalized racism illustrates Drown’s effectiveness as what the chapter terms a narrative of loss. Díaz’s text grapples with the immediate, measurable losses associated with immigration: loss of a physical home, loss of family, loss of language. His principal narrator, Yunior de las Casas, illustrates the psychocultural migration intrinsic to people who are stuck in a narrative of loss. The stories in Drown are striking examples of contemporary Dominican immigrant narratives wherein characters must navigate the riptides of cultural identity. Because identity construction in Anglo- and Latino/a America is deceptively narrow, Yunior illustrates how one must swim entirely out of them or drown between them.
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