Connections to the Past?

Junot Diaz’s short story collection Drown left me feeling like my less than easy life has been a walk in the park. Ultimately, what I identified with the most in these stories was the sense of not belonging that feels prevalent throughout the collection. Additionally, the source of the alienation, some sort of awkwardly defining quality, also really helped me to connect to these pieces and to simply fly through the readings. Finally, I was pulled into these stories primarily through the first piece “Ysrael”.

“Ysrael” contained many of the qualities that kept me reading Drown beyond what I normally would have devoted to a narrative written from the perspective of a minority. I suppose that this comment deserves explanation. Well, to put it simply, I have never really respected minority tales for the simple fact that many of them that I have read fall under one of two categories: ‘woe is me and my people’ or ‘this is how I broke free of the oppression that affects my people’. The first problem I have with these two types of narrative is the predictability of the plot. I am a reader that needs to be stimulated in some form or fashion in order to continue reading a work, creative or not. This stimulation doesn’t need to exclusively be from entertainment; for example, if a piece makes me think differently about a certain subject then I will continue reading to see what direction the author takes. In the case of “Ysrael”, in particular, I could draw parallels to my own life and, as a result, kept reading to see if I could find further parallels in other stories in the collection.

The parallels for me in “Ysrael” all center around the title character. Mainly, the parallels are centered more on representative objects than anything else. For example, the mask that Ysrael wears, and eventually loses, felt to me like the shell that I wore all throughout high school and for my first couple of years on campus. There is, of course, a very distinct difference; Ysrael was undoubtedly traumatized by the removal of his mask, whereas I was more than happy to cast aside my shell and allow the real me to finally show through. Secondly, and more directly, the relationship that the two brothers have was not altogether unlike the relationship that my little brother and I had during our younger years. There wasn’t quite as much of an age discrepancy between the two of us, and I wasn’t out sleeping with everything that moved and produced estrogen; but the basic elements of the relationship were there. If there is one area that I didn’t really like the parallels it was here. I mean, I always felt that my brother and I had a fairly stereotypical relationship until recently, and, quite frankly, if I’m going to read about a pair of brothers, I prefer to have the author do something that I haven’t seen before.