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Sep 08, 2011

Paul rated it:

As when you're listening to some old piece of music you never thought much of, it could be a long ago seemingly throwaway pop dance number like This Old Heart of Mine by the Isley Brothers, or some slyer more college-degreed album track like (let's say) Life During Wartime by Talking Heads, and you suddenly jump up and think but - but really, this is a masterpiece! - it's not just another painting-by-numbers from Motown, it's not just another sneery too-clever construction you skip while you're More...

4 comments like (23 people liked it)

Aug 22, 2007

Stace rated it:

I was lucky enough to have seen Junot Diaz read, and that cabròn was hilarious! His talk was fresh, lewd, direct, sly, sweet, and honest. Exactly like his writing. He spoke of how Hip Hop had informed his life and work, and how a writer must use experience to shape their art; auto-biography and fiction helix together. His street talk and easy manner reminded me of the slick Mexican kids I grew up with(with due respect for the differences in Latino cultures). No amount of vernacular speech could More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jun 23, 2007

Myfanwy rated it:

There are several recurrent themes running through this collection (the lost father, the regained father, the lost love, brotherhood, betrayal--often sexual) but the one I found most striking was that of facelessness.

You would think that facelessness is synonymous with invisibility, but here it is not. There is something within that facelessness, which makes the person all the more visible--scorned, pitied, hated, feared, and by some, treated with great kindness. The faced want the More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Jun 15, 2010

Jason rated it:

I can't do it. I can't listen to books on tape.

Listening to tapes allows me one opportunity--one time only--to experience the writing. That's not my paradigm. It's not the way I've grown to experience books. I need to look at the physical words--they mean something. I need to reread sentences and paragraphs. I need to touch pages and manipulate the weight and rectilinear dimensions of the book. I need to interpret and define and orient and catalog the story into my own retri More...

25 comments like (12 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2008

Malbadeen rated it:

The cursor keeps blinking at me, daring me to try and convey the magnitude of love I have for Diaz's writing but I can't...I'm a failure!

Every story needs is filled with sentences/dialogue that are gaspably good. My fovorite sentence in the collection is from the story, How To Date a Brown Girl, Black Girl, White Girl or Halfie. It is as follows:
"Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa" More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

May 09, 2010

Madeline rated it:

Ten short stories about growing up first in the Dominican Republic and then New Jersey. It reminded me a litte of Sherman Alexie's stories, albeit a little less poetic. But still very well done. We discussed "How To Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie" at particular length in my fiction writing class, so I'll quote one of my favorite bits from that story:
"Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. If the girl's from the Terrace stack the boxes behind t More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 12, 2008

Daniel rated it:

WOW! Just freaking wow!!!

I picked this book up because I enjoyed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. When I started to read it, I thought that this felt like a handful of failed starts to similar novels. But the further that I read into it, the more I realized what it was that Junot Diaz was doing, painting a complete picture out of multiple fractured pieces.

The writing in this book is remarkably sparse, short with details and full of space where you are asked to inter More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2007

Matt rated it:

One of the coolest things that ever happened to me was I got to participate in a creative writing workshop with Junot Diaz. My girlfriend was in the class also, which was the first time we had a class together. We had been living together for a little while, and even though we were very much in love at the time, whe would do certain shit that really got on my nerves, like for example always being late (as in over an hour late!) for everything. So on the first day of class, she came in (predictab More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 19, 2007

Ms. Wayne added it

From Publishers Weekly

The 10 tales in this intense debut collection plunge us into the emotional lives of people redefining their American identity. Narrated by adolescent Dominican males living in the struggling communities of the Dominican Republic, New York and New Jersey, these stories chronicle their outwardly cool but inwardly anguished attempts to recreate themselves in the midst of eroding family structures and their own burgeoning sexuality. The best pieces, such as "Ag More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2007

Lynn rated it:

Found this on our bookshelves. Can't put it down.

BTW, Diaz has a novel out now, reviewed in this week's NY Times book review.

This was as great as everyone says. Reading it is like a vacation to a place where you meet a lot of local people who are interesting. The twist here is that I at least really don't want to hang with the characters in these stories - the drug dealers and junkies and low-wage workers who in general and understandably don't have much in common or much More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Apr 26, 2009

Kate rated it:

Compulsively readable novelistic book of short stories, raw and crude and tender all at once. Diaz has this wonderful ultra-subtle way of revealing tenderness in rough characters. Had to give a star off for the last chapter - this book kinda reminded me of "Nowhere Man" in that you get the feeling he cops out at the end, turns away from the main character and towards a hesitant imagining of his father's life. I didn't expect a happy, tidy ending, but I expected something a little mo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 21, 2008

Amy rated it:

having grown up in a spanish speaking home, his mix of english and spanish is a throw back to when i was a kid listening to the grown ups talk, only now it's easier to translate. his short stories were very touching and sometimes a little shocking, but good. and the complicated family unit makes you feel better about your own (more often then not) upbringing. i would definitely read more of junot diaz.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2007

Kecia rated it:

"How To Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie" (I'm sure I messed that title up) is still one of my favorite short stories.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2008

Bart rated it:

If you haven’t already read this book, there’s really no need. Most of its best parts are recycled in Oscar Wao. A man without a face, people shuffling between Santo Domingo and New Jersey, some early experimenting in Junot Diaz’s “original voice”.

The toughest part of reading Diaz is trying not to put his critics’ opinions in front of Diaz’s words. Trying to separate Diaz’s at-times honest efforts from the hysterical effect they have on certain literary types is hard sledding. It More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2007

Nora rated it:

Junot Diaz is flat out one of the best "young writers" writing today. There is no room for arguments; I will take no dissenting voices into my ears, into my consciousness. No. This collection of short stories was so engaging, so vivid and palpable (it's one of those books that would be called 'colorful' by middle aged liberal suburban librarians "a colorful and exciting series of short stories about the Dominican and New Jersey and the places in between"). The characters More...

1 comment like

Sep 21, 2007

Robb rated it:

It's like, mostly what I think is good about this book has to do with its voices and their honesty (which should read: particularity). But also, the way that larger kinds of social history play out in the context of this one person's life--it's like the sort of thing that happens in, say, Invisible Man, where there's the Harlem riots, and there's the (Second? Third?) Migration happening, but it's all happening around the bildungsroman dealing with this really present 'I' narrator. Anywho, I t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 28, 2009

Masanaka rated it:

I guess I failed to taste the biggest charm when I first read this story. I was trying very hard to build my English comprehension around that time (I'm blushing...) , and my attitude was rather static and intolerable about dynamic but untidy writings like this. Still, I feel something attractive in the story --- percussive language, quick changes of sequences... I’ll try to give it another go when I’m ready. Till then, I’ll keep three stars.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

David rated it:

It's a little difficult for me to pinpoint exactly why I like this book so much. I'm afraid that my Dominican background has colored my opinion of it, somewhat. However, I must say that the writing structure and style Diaz uses has captured my attention in every story. The best way I can describe it for now is minimalist, but he does very interesting things like never using quotation marks, and writing almost entirely in the first person. After I finish this book and look up more information More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 24, 2009

Adele rated it:

Once, on a bus in Tanzania, I got into a fight about the movie "Crash". The fight was pretty silly, but I still got upset enough to cry about it. The argument was an impassioned debate between me and two of the other kids I was studying abroad with. They thought it was a brilliant important commentary on race and class in America. I thought it was a didactic, simplified, contrived piece of shit.

Drown is lthe opposite of a movie like Crash. Sure, it covers race and cl More...

0 comments like

Nov 10, 2011

Patrick rated it:

Such a sharp collection. There's a great deal of first-person narration here, and I would have liked another story or two like the last, "Negocios," in which a son reimagines his father's early years in America. It's not quite an objectivity, but there's a willingness to move beyond the self here, to consider the ways our choices have repercussions beyond our own lives, a jitteriness, a sense of strangeness and creativity that the other narratives seem to lack. There isn't a weak story More...

0 comments like

Sep 08, 2011

Alex rated it:

There are some things all people know are wrong. One of them, to me, is hitting people over the head with an empty glass bottle, which is why Drown lost me pretty early on.

In about half of this short story collection, we see about that level of brutishness. Children acting like grown thugs. Thugs that we're supposed to feel for. It's that sort of book where you're supposed to feel for characters like that, because they grew up rough. They were poor. There weren't the right opportunitie More...

0 comments like

Jun 03, 2011

Nikitabanana rated it:

Many people are probably familiar with Junot Diaz’s first novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” which defies categorization so well that I could only describe it as Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Star Trek meets Alan Moore meets Kanye West. But before Oscar Wao reached the bookshelves, Diaz first published “Drown” a collection of short stories 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 f More...

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May 02, 2011

Chelsea rated it:

Drown is a series of interconnected short stories that follow the life of young Yunior, his brother Rafa, and their mother and father as the family moves from the Dominican Republic to the neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York, a largely Dominican/Caribbean neighborhood. As the stories progress, Diaz is able to advance Yunior’s voice along with his age, a narrative skill I’ve seen used hundreds of times, but never with the dexterity that Diaz brings to the overall story. Take this examp More...

0 comments like

Jan 25, 2011

Elena rated it:

This book is a series of short stories about peoples (minorities, hispanic)lives, stories told, things that have happened to them. I think mostly all of the stories were interesting enough to read, they definitely have a pull that makes you want to know more, even after the short story is over, it makes you wish that it were a real book, a full book youve read, even though its not. I think my most favorite story was the one about the man who went to america and left his family behind to get a be More...

0 comments like

Jan 24, 2011

Caroline rated it:

Amazing book, incredible writing style! It's a set of short stories, all inter-related semi-autobiographical stories about the transition from the DR to NYC for Junot Diaz and his family. The rhythm of his writing is remarkable and the humor and sadness mix together throughout. It's a quick read and I tried to slow it down as much as possible, but it was really too good to wait.

Saw Junot Diaz speak at the Jaipur Literature Festival and was BLOWN away by his nonchalant poetic nature and More...

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Nov 18, 2010

Saira rated it:

I honestly thought it was kind of good except for the fact it was too inappropriate. I was disappointed because the book was too confusing; there was no use of editorial assistance and the Spanish in it couldn't even be translated. I personally don't mind books containing Spanish in them because I'm Spanish and I think its nice when two different cultures are combined but it wouldn't be fair to others who don't know Spanish. The author could have translated. Overall I did liked the way how the c More...

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Sep 13, 2010

Jenisse rated it:

Drown
Junot Diaz
Penguin Group USA
New York: Riverhead
ISBN 1573220418
280 pps.

Diaz's words are straight up; real!

Drown is a book filled with short stories. Diaz's humor filled pages are completely addictive especially the stories like How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie" and "boyfriend". You have to understand a little bit of spanish to understand what he's trying to say. Diaz's experience as a dominican More...

0 comments like

Jul 14, 2010

Amal rated it:

Drown by Junot Diaz is a collection of ten short stories intended to uncover the experience of Dominicans who immigrate to America. He attempts to explore how young male Dominican immigrants cope with living in America - the rules they have to learn, the rules they have to forget, in order to succeed or even survive. Although the characters are Hispanic, the situations - usually due to poverty - that they find themselves in are relatable to almost any immigrant group. His writing is spiced with More...

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May 25, 2010

Gio rated it:

In short, this book with its short stories, rocks. The writer offers up a series of linked shorts that describe the life of a Dominican immigrant teenager in New Jersey in the shadow of New York city. He sells drugs, has a gay friend, sabotages the toilets of his rich clients, and basically avoids an early death. This book with it's gritty look at life on the streets put Junot Diaz in America's face.

Diaz writes from the first person perspective and even includes a short in the rarely More...

0 comments like

Apr 16, 2010

Kortney rated it:

I like this book because I felt like I could connect with this book. I like reading stories that i can understand better, and that makes me want to keep reading more and more. I also like this book because I liked the way the author kept me guessing. I kept wondering what's going to happen next, or who the narrator was. I noticed how the author was sending out the message that everyone goes through different situations they have to deal with. Either if it's a positive or negative situation. Ever More...

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