Alan Cambeira
Author of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar (a novel)


The Immigrant Experience   August 20, 2002
 19 out of 20 found this review helpful

This exceedingly strong debut collection of stories is set in the ghettos of the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, but most of all in the invisible psychic landscape of the immigrants who move from the first to the latter. Six of the ten stories here may be familiar to readers of The New Yorker, Story, or other well-regarded literary mags in whose pages they previously appeared. Diaz's stories offer grimly matter-of-fact accounts of harsh childhoods in harsh environments where fathers are either feared or absent and mothers are exhausted and resigned to their fate.

The stories set in the DR are from a youth's perspective, and have the unmistakable whiff of the autobiographical about them. In "Ysrael", the narrator and his brother are sent to the campo for the summer to live with relatives. There, they are casually cruel to a local boy whose face was disfigured by a pig. The boy later turns up as the subject of "No Face", which attempts to delve into his mind, with lesser effect than almost all the other stories. A third story, "Arguantando" follows the family from "Ysrael" as they wait to hear from their father, who has moved to the US. The final and longest story in the collection, "Negocios", explains the father's journey to the US and his many trials and tribulations before he can bring his family over.

The stories set in the US follow the young boy as he grows older in New Jersey-where shoplifting, drug dealing, and eventually work replace the poverty of the slums of Santa Domingo. "Fiesta, 1980" is the best car-sickness story you're likely to read and "How To Date" is a quick guide to interracial dating, perhaps overly flip when compared to the other stories. In "Aurora", a teenage drug dealer (the young boy grown older?) daydreams about a normal life with a crack-addicted girl. The same character reappears in "Drown", describing a former close friend's homosexual advances and his own ambivalence.

My favorite two stories were "Boyfriend" and "Edison, New Jersey". The first is a very brief story about a young man overhearing his downstairs neighbor's breakup, and working up the courage to eventually speak to her. The second is about a young man who helps deliver and assemble pool tables for a living and his well-meaning attempt to help a Dominican girl escape a life of sexual service. Both stories contain a wistful nostalgic air that's both dead on and haunting. All of Diaz's stories are immensely satisfying, and taken as a whole, they form an excellent picture of the Dominican immigrant experience. It's been six years now since this collection came out, and hopefully we'll be seeing something new soon from him.


An important voice in literature   February 14, 2003
 19 out of 26 found this review helpful

Junot Diaz writes fiction without flourish. His words are stark, edgy, direct - and his stories cut through stereotype right to the quick of the truth. DROWN pulses with the rhythms of Spanish and New Jersey accents as it explores lives in both The Dominican Republic and Jersey City. Mostly adolescents and young adults, the characters struggle against a dimming or obscured future, and tend to live for the moment, even as they hope for something better. The most compelling stories are "Ysrael," "Aurora," "Edison, New Jersey," and "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie." This is a brief book, only ten stories and only a few over 20 pages long, but it packs power with its brevity.

I highly recommend this book for those with an interest in Latino and/or multicultural fiction, and for those who enjoy short story collections.


Beautiful and stunning   May 21, 2003
 13 out of 13 found this review helpful

This book is a most honest and basic portrayal of humanity. Diaz's language is simple yet beautiful, and his themes are universal yet deeply challenging. The book follows the lives of different people, mostly Dominican, but it's characters relate to the reader's most basic human soul in the same way that Holden Caulfield does. A Brilliant Work


I don't know what else to say.   October 9, 2006
 11 out of 52 found this review helpful

I had to read "Drown" for my ENC1101, Written Communications I class. I was sorely disappointed in the school for making us read something that was offensive, poorly written, grammatically embarassing and just downright boring. The stories were disjointed, and read like a diary...which I didn't find a plus.

I then was assigned to write a number of essays on the book, which was SO hard because there isn't much to write about. The best way to approach this collection of short (very short) stories is to imagine yourself in the writer's shoes. Otherwise, you're not going to care about his crappy childhood or the women he abuses.

I have an opportunity to meet Junot Diaz this Thursday at my school. I will not attend because I'm sure that, although he is apparently an English professor, I could convince even him that his book requires some serious rewriting.

As a middle-class white female, I don't connect with the author or with his opinions, which makes the book hard to digest. Unless you are a poor Dominican male with an absentee father, it is difficult to understand the point Diaz is attempting to make, if he is attempting it at all. I would suggest that this book be removed from college curriculums. Please, stop making us read this garbage.