Drown

"This stunning collection of stories offers an unsentimental glimpse of life among the immigrants from the Dominican Republic--and other front-line reports on the ambivalent promise of the American dream--by an eloquent and original writer who describes more than physical dislocation in conveying the price that is paid for leaving culture and homeland behind." --**San Francisco Chronicle**.Junot Diaz's stories are as vibrant, tough, unexotic, and beautiful as their settings - Santa Domingo, Dominican Neuva York, the immigrant neighborhoods of industrial New Jersey with their gorgeously polluted skyscapes. Places and voices new to our literature yet classically American: coming-of-age stories full of wild humor, intelligence, rage, and piercing tenderness. And this is just the beginning. Diaz is going to be a giant of American prose. --**Francisco Goldman** Ever since Diaz began publishing short stories in venues as prestigious as **The New Yorker**, he has been touted as a major new talent, and his debut collection affirms this claim. Born and raised in Santo Domingo, Diaz uses the contrast between his island homeland and life in New York City and New Jersey as a fulcrum for his trenchant tales. His young male narrators are teetering into precarious adolescence. For these sons of harsh or absent fathers and bone-weary, stoic mothers, life is an unrelenting hustle. In Santo Domingo, they are sent to stay with relatives when the food runs out at home; in the States, shoplifting and drugdealing supply material necessities and a bit of a thrill in an otherwise exhausting and frustrating existence. There is little affection, sex is destructive, conversation strained, and even the brilliant beauty of a sunset is tainted, its colors the product of pollutants. Keep your eye on Diaz; his first novel is on the way. --**Booklist**

with Ten Stories That Move From The Barrios Of The Dominican Republic To The Struggling Urban Communities Of New Jersey, Junot Diaz Makes His Remarkable Debut. In Ysrael, Two Brothers Hunt A Disfigured Boy Who Hides Behind A Mask; In No Face, The Mirror Is Flipped And Perspective Belongs To The Tormented. In Fiesta, 1980, A Spirited Family Gathering Plays Against The Noiseless Hum Of A Father's Infidelities. In Boyfriend, A Young Man Eavesdrops On The Woman Next Door And Colors In The Life Overheard With The Drama Born Of Intense Longing. And Always, It Seems There Is The Throb Of Waiting: In Aguantando, For The Fulfillment Of A Promise; In Negocios, For Rescue; In Aurora, For Respite; In Drown, For Resolution.

robert Spillman

with Recent Stories In the New Yorker, the Paris Review And Best American Stories, Junot Diaz Has Been Hyped As The Next Young Gun Of American Fiction. With His Bare-knuckled Prose (that's The Way It Is. They Built These Barrios Out Of Bad Luck And You Got To Get Used To That.) And Tough, Grim Settings, Diaz Works The Same Emotional Landscape As Early Jerzy Kosinski And Thom Jones. And Like Jones And Kosinski, Diaz's Work Mainly Consists Of Thinly Veiled Autobiography.

the 10 Stories In Drown Tell Of His Impoverished, Fatherless Youth In The Dominican Republic And His Struggle With Immigrant Life In New Jersey. Diaz Has A Precise Eye For Pain, Rendering The Suffering Of The Dispossessed With Clinical Accuracy. In The Stories Ysrael And No Face, Diaz Tells Of A Boy Whose Face Has Been Horribly Disfigured By A Pig And How He Is Tormented By The Kids Of The Village. But Diaz Also Has A Wry Touch, As In How To Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, Or Halfie, Where The Teenage Narrator Living In The Projects Gives A Lesson In How To Get Laid By Any Kind Of Girl: Dinner Will Be Tense... A Halfie Will Tell You That Her Parents Met In The Movement... Your Brother Once Heard That One And Said, 'man, That Sounds Like A Whole Lot Of Uncle Tomming To Me.' Don't Repeat This.

the Last Story, Negocios, Points Up This Collection's One Weakness. It Is A Chronicle Of His Father's Immigration, Remarriage And, Finally, The Rescuing Of His Children And First Wife From Their Bleak Life In The Dominican Republic. While The Language, Images And Characters Are Well Drawn, There's Little Sense Of Fiction -- Little Of The Depth And Breadth Of Kosinski Or Jones. These Stories Don't Read Like Stories, But More Like Sociology Or Reportage, Like Firsthand new Yorker Pieces Of Old. Diaz Expertly Captures The Rage And Alienation Of The Dominican Immigrant Experience, But It Will Be Interesting To See What He Does If He Turns His Talent And Indignation To True Fiction. -- salon

With ten stories that move from the barrios of the Dominican Republic to the struggling urban communities of New Jersey, Junot Diaz makes his remarkable debut. Diaz's work is unflinching and strong, and these stories crackle with an electric sense of discovery. Diaz evokes a world in which fathers are gone, mothers fight with grim determination for their families and themselves, and the next generation inherits the casual cruelty, devastating ambivalence, and knowing humor of lives circumscribed by poverty and uncertainty. In Drown , Diaz has harnessed the rhythms of anger and release, frustration and joy, to indelible effect. From the beloved and award-winning author Junot Díaz, a spellbinding saga of a family's journey through the New World. A coming-of-age story of unparalleled power, Drown introduced the world to Junot Díaz's exhilarating talents. It also introduced an unforgettable narrator— Yunior, the haunted, brilliant young man who tracks his family's precarious journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo to the tenements of industrial New Jersey, and their epic passage from hope to loss to something like love. Here is the soulful, unsparing book that made Díaz a literary sensation. Originally published in 1997, Drown instantly garnered terrific acclaim. Moving from the barrios of the Dominican Republic to the struggling urban communities of New Jersey, these heartbreaking, completely original stories established Diaz as one of contemporary fictions most exhilarating new voices. A Collection Of Eleven Stories By A Young Writer Evoke His Hard-fought Youth In The Barrios Of The Dominican Republic And The Bleak Urban Landscapes Of New Jersey, Combining A Journalist's Dispassionate Eye With An Ear For Poetry. A First Collection. "Stories set in the Dominican Republic and in New Jersey. In Ysrael, a boy is disfigured by a pig, No Face is on his trip to America to undergo plastic surgery, and How to Date is on the art of dating interracially."