Junot Diaz
The main character in “How to date a Browngirl, Blackgirl,
Whitegirl, or a Halfie” by Junot
Diaz is nothing more than a field manual written by a teenage boy with
Dominican roots. The story was very straight forward. So straight forward that
I didn’t notice any themes, symbolism, or metaphor on the first read. But,
after reading it again I noticed how cocky the speaker was. Had these methods
of getting with girls worked for him before? There was something to his
cockiness that stuck out to me. That’s when I realized that he was making
generalizations about different races. All of these generalizations seemed
extremely Laissez-fair,
and that there waasnt much thought put into the characteristics of each race. In
my opinion, this is the authors way of pointing out that we generalize
everyone, and we do it constantly.
I agree with this only to a certain degree, I feel he is most definitely is projecting post-modernism heavily through the constant details of him consciously thinking of how each woman would view him based on his actions and his belongings even to his place of dwelling. I also think he hints more at the post modernism through the plain title of the piece. This is a manual to get laid, which is unfortunately what our society has come to. knowing some one these days is knowing how they are in bed. One other aspect of this piece is his age, he is at this point of puberty and he is trying to grow and adapt into the role that "society" says he should be. This is more of a story of social influence then just stereotyping.
ReplyDeleteI agree as well, If i were to randomly read this poem I would think it was completely post- modernism because the way the narrator speaks threw the story it prevails a sense of modernism that would relate to todays society kind of like what the comment above me said. I could recognize the time period because it was so straight forward that it seemed like it was written yesterday in a small community relating to the text. I relate it to my personal experiences growing up, teenagers that age talked and acted identical to this poem.
ReplyDelete