Sag like a Sail ("Ysrael," Simile)
"If I kept on he'd punch me in the shoulder and walk on until what was left of him was the color of his shirt filling in the spaces between the leaves. Something inside me would sag like a sail." ("Ysrael," 6)
In this evocative simile, Yunior compares his feelings to being rejected by his brother, Rafa, to the sag of a sail. Typical of Díaz's sparse and controlled prose style, it effectively describes Yunior's response to Rafa's treatment in as few words as possible. Throughout the story, Yunior is torn between looking up to his brother and resenting the way that Rafa treats him. This severely affects Yunior's emotional state. Another example of this dynamic occurs after Rafa and Yunior have gotten off the autobús. Rafa does not know that Yunior has just been sexually harassed by an older man on the bus, and he responds with anger when Yunior begins to cry. Yunior describes his intense emotional response to his brother's anger: "I wouldn't have raised my head if God himself had appeared in the sky and pissed down on us" (14). In both of these examples, Yunior describes his feelings of helplessness and shame without resorting to those specific words. Instead, he brings his emotions to life through imagery and descriptive language that make them seem all the more authentic for the reader.
Kids You Have to Watch ("Aurora," Simile)
"I thought she'd come out messed up but she was just thinner and couldn't keep still, her hands and face restless, like kids you have to watch." ("Aurora," 64)
In this simile, Lucero describes the way Aurora's face and body moves after she is released from juvie. The simile powerfully evokes the fidgety nature of Aurora's movements, as if they have a life of their own. This simile is effective because it draws from the already established context, tone, and mood of the story, which is about two drug dealers who spend their time pushing drugs to the young and old people who live in their neighborhood. The phrase "kids you have to watch" relates to the unstable environment of the narrator and many of the other characters. The environment they live in would not be one conducive to raising a healthy child. There actually is a kid in the story, Cut's girlfriend's son, who is so hungry he asks Lucero for two hamburgers. It is evident that he is not being properly watched over by his mother.
Jesus ("Aguantando," Simile)
"Rafa used to think that he'd come in the night, like Jesus, that one morning we'd find him at our breakfast table, unshaven and smiling." ("Aguantando," 87)
In this simile, Yunior describes Rafa's prediction of how Papi will come home like the second coming of Jesus. It effectively demonstrates the larger-than-life, almost mythical, place that Papi holds in Yunior's imagination as a result of his absence. According to the Bible, no one expected Jesus to rise from the grave after he was crucified. In fact, according to John 18:25-27, Jesus told one of his disciples to take Mary, his mother, in as his own mother. Apparently, no one around Jesus, including Jesus himself, expected him to return. When he does rise from the grave, therefore, it is a miracle at an enormous scale. Yunior calls upon this biblical resonance when he imagines the arrival of his father. Therefore, Rafa's prediction that they will simply "find him at our breakfast table, unshaven and smiling" would be, in their eyes, nothing short of a miracle.
Heart-Leather ("Boyfriend," Simile)
"It would have broken my heart if it hadn't been so damn familiar. I guess I'd gotten numb to that sort of thing. I had heart-leather like walruses got blubber." ("Boyfriend," 112)
This simile comes from "Boyfriend," which is about a lonely man who monitors the life of his downstairs neighbor, referred to as Girlfriend. In this simile, he compares the hardness around his heart to whale's protective blubber. This simile does a good job of explaining how his emotional change came to be: whales evolved blubber out of a need to keep themselves warm inside of the cold ocean. Similarly, the narrator's "heart-leather" is an adaption in response to his heart being broken by Loretta. This comparison makes his "heart-leather" seem inevitable as well as necessary for his survival. Otherwise, he'd be far too vulnerable and at risk.
Grasshoppers ("No Face," Simile)
"Four boys tackle him and the coins jump out of his hands like grasshoppers." ("No Face," 156)
This simile from "No Face" describes the way that the coins jump out of Ysrael's hand as if they were their own autonomous beings. It is particularly powerful because Ysrael has just described to us how he painstakingly searched for them on the ground around the bars, stepping around "piss-holes" and "vomit" to do so (154). Additionally, this simile emphasizes the powerlessness that Ysrael must reckon with in this scene: he is currently being ambushed by a group of boys who mean to do him great harm. He does not tell us his emotions in this moment, but it isn't a stretch to believe that inside he feels as equally panicked and flighty as grasshoppers that are caught in someone's hand.
