Drown Essay Questions

Several of Yunior's family members interact with each other in "Fiesta, 1980." Choose two characters and conduct a close reading of the scene, making sure to pay attention to gender roles, family dynamics, and any other themes that might arise from the passage.

The motif of silence appears in the final pages of "Fiesta, 1980" when Yunior is coping with learning about his father's mistress. When he asks Rafa if he knew about their father's mistress, Rafa tells him that he had already met her twice, but that he did not want to tell Yunior because he did not know what to say. This interaction is directly mirrored by Mami's questioning of Yunior if everything is okay. Yunior decides not to reveal Papi's secret to Mami, even though he is left wondering what would have happened if he had told her the truth. In this scene, the physical interactions speak more volume than the verbal ones. When Mami corners Yunior, she places her hand on his own, and once he lies to her to cover for his father, she places her hand on his shoulder and squeezes. In this way, it is the physical interactions between characters that reveal the truth of their situations to those around them even when they cannot speak. This trend is evident throughout the rest of "Fiesta, 1980," including the scene between Mami and Tia, which Yunior is only able to watch from afar. He cannot hear what they are saying, but he knows they are deep in conversation and wonders if the party will turn into a fight.

Many characters choose silence instead of speech at pivotal moments of their narratives. Choose one example of a character making this choice, and analyze how it affects our understanding of both the character and the story that they exist in.

In "Drown," the narrator, Yunior, has several uncomfortable encounters with his best friend, Beto, who is queer. In these encounters, Beto performs sexual acts on Yunior even though Yunior does not give Beto explicit verbal consent to do so. They leave Yunior feeling incredibly uncomfortable and scared that he will be labelled as a pato (a Dominican slur for homosexual). In these passages, Yunior's silences make the encounter between Yunior and Beto uncertain and make Beto seem predatory. However, they also reveal something important about Yunior himself, who would prefer to stay silent about what happened to him so that he does not have to analyze what it means in terms of his identity. He is terrified of living labelled as "different" in his largely homophobic neighborhood.

Even though the stories of Drown do not easily fit into a single overarching narrative, there are several recurring characters that change and grow as the story collection progresses. Choose one of these characters and note how they have changed, making sure to perform a close reading of the scenes they appear in.

Yunior's mother, Mami, makes an appearance in several stories of Drown. When she first appears in "Ysrael," she is only mentioned in terms of her absence: she sends Yunior and Rafa to live with their aunt and uncle in the campo. Mami's character truly comes alive, however, in the stories that follow, and Yunior reflects on his life before and after moving to the United States. When read together, "Fiesta, 1980" and "Drown" offer an interesting picture of Mami following the move. It seems that after living in the United States for a couple of years, Mami's personality has changed in several notable ways. In "Fiesta, 1980," Mami is vibrant and full of life. However, by the time that the events of "Drown" come along, Mami has retreated into herself, and she lives a life that is mostly defined by silence. Yunior describes her personality at this time in her life: "She has discovered the secret to silence: pouring café without a splash, walking between rooms as if gliding on a cushion of felt, crying without a sound" (94). When read together, these stories offer a complete picture of a woman who has been forced to reckon with the reality of her new existence in the United States, one that does not fully live up to the expectations of the American Dream and instead comes with its own sets of difficulties, including poverty and institutionalized racism.

Machismo is a recurring theme throughout Drown. Choose one instance of machismo from one of the stories and analyze how Díaz relates to this theme. Does Díaz show machismo pure and simple, or does he complicate this social phenomenon within the work?

"How to Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie" is perhaps one of the most widely discussed stories from Drown. In the story, Yunior presents his advice to an implied male reader as a "how-to" guide on how to date girls of different races. On the surface, the story is particularly machista because Yunior only refers to the girls by their racial characteristics and never bothers to give them a name. As a result, he objectifies them, and he doesn't see them as humans beyond his desire to hook up with them. Despite this, the story is more about Yunior than it is about these girls. Over the course of the story, we learn more about his own complicated relationship with his racial identity. The result is a narrative that complicates our easy assumptions about race and understands racial identity as more of a performance than an inherent trait.

Many of the characters in Drown seem stuck in cycles. Lucero and Aurora, for example, are stuck in a toxic system that they cannot break out of even though it causes both of them immense pain. Choose one character from Drown who is stuck in a cycle. What aspect of their personalities contribute to this cycle? Is there hope for them to ever break out?

Papi, who we get to know in-depth in "Negocios," is caught in a cycle of lying and heartbreak that ruins many lives. He abandons Mami, Yunior, and Rafa in the Dominican Republic and marries a woman in the United States named Nilda. After several years of being married to her and having a child with her, he suddenly leaves her to go back to his first family, leaving her heartbroken and alone. We know through several contextual clues that several years later, he leaves Mami to move in with a woman in Florida. It seems he has never broken out of this cycle, and he never will. One explanation for this behavior is that Papi is a macho who sees women less as people and more as opportunities for personal gain. However, Yunior also suggests to the reader in "Negocios" that he makes the decisions that he does out of necessity, a need for self-preservation.