Junot Diaz has created quite a lot of buzz within my circle of friends, but I never got to read any of the recommendations that I had received from them. Now I know what the hype is all about. Finally a piece by a Dominican like myself —the use of language was enjoyable because it depicted our speech impeccably, so it was a breeze to read. Overall I found his writing to be enjoyable, it felt very conversational and realistic. My friends and I tend to speak in Spanglish from time to time and Diaz’ portrayed that perfectly—I think many bilinguals have this issue. The switch from English to subtle hints of Spanish made it feel as though a friend was re-telling a story to me. The story line was also one that reflected the lives of many Hispanic youths who live in an impoverished neighborhood—drug dealing, theft, military recruiters trying to get them to join the military, trespassing troublemakers, etc.

A portion of the reading that I particularly found interesting was the beginning. Junot undoubtedly knows how to keep his reader interested. He starts the piece with an instant hook:

“My mother tells me Beto’s home, waits for me to say something, but I keep watching the TV. Only when she’s in bed do I put on my jacket and swing through the neighborhood to see. He’s a pato now but two years ago we were friends and he would walk into the apartment without knocking, his heavy voice rousing my mother from the Spanish of her room and drawing me up from the basement, a voice that crackled and made you think of uncles or grandfathers.”

After reading the boldfaced text, I instantly questioned why Yunior stopped being Beto’s friend, and I somewhat knew that this was a foreshadowing to a story that would be told later in the text. Yunior’s quick introduction of Beto a pato was interesting to me and hilarious to say the least. Then later in the text we see that Beto somewhat took advantage of Yunior during a session of porn watching, but was it really taking advantage of him since Yunior’s reaction wasn’t one that you’d expect from someone who would be resisting?

My interpretation of this text is that it’s a story of a troubled kid, one who is drowning in poverty, confusion and disbelief. Yunior retells his friendship with Beto vividly and somehow seems like they were great memories of his. My personal opinion is that Yunior in fact felt something for Beto, but because it was probably looked at as “wrong”, he decided to distance himself from him in order to avoid disappointment or disapproval from his family. Yunior’s character is one who is afraid of change and it is evident within the text.

We will meet at 12:30PM at MOMA near the 54th Street entrance (by the membership tables inside). Remember, if you have a bookbag, you’ll need to check it but keep a notebook for writing.

In the opening of notes of a native son, I was drawn into the authors malaise. I immediately reflected on the idea that as a nation we just came to supporting equality across the board 60 years ago. The reality is those reforms only began to be respected 20 years ago but there are still many sociological race problems. I saw how James Baldwin lost his innocence in his tale, he tried to keep his cool but he soon lashed out. This quote ” She was stepping on their toes, indeed she was, all over the nation.” links directly to what was happening with African Americans at the time, this quote likes to the metamorphosis that occurred within Baldwin.

“Always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?”

This final line in the story truly indicated the mothers feeling towards the girl and the fear of the daughter becoming a “slut”. The fear is so high that when the daughter interrupts her and ask “what if the baker wont let me feel the bread?” the mother immediately responds to her. She responds to her in a way that the mother is already believing that the daughter is an outcast “slut” in the eyes of the society.There is not much information of the girl. As the reader we don’t have much detail to say that the mother has reasoning for believing the daughter wants to be a “slut”. The mother seems to not be giving the girl much of a chance to prove herself. I believe in a way the mother is actually pushing the girl into becoming a slut rather then preventing.

Virginia’s story, a room of one’s own, is great. Since she chose to not make a conclusion about gender inequality herself but give the liberty to draw conclusion into readers’ hands, there are so many things to discuss. I’d like to talk about one simple incident taking place at the beginning of her story. That is her upsetting experience at Oxbridge.

Virginia is a woman. Yes, she is a woman. It’s plain and true. So what? What makes a woman’s feet unfit to walk on Oxbridge’s turf? I’m trying to be very understanding here. The society at that time was not ready to accept women as equal to men. I cannot change the history, so I let it be the case here. But what I’m more concerned about is the reason for the discrimination against woman walking on the turf. Were they afraid that the grass would get hurt? by a woman’s feet? As far as I know, the number of women possessing finer heels far exceeds that number of men’s heels. So a woman stepping on the turf couldn’t and shouldn’t hurt the grass that much, at least not so much more than the pain the men’s feet would do. So it shouldn’t be that the well-being of the grass was their concern. Grass doesn’t discriminate. Then why?

It surely doesn’t; because I see a human’s emotions much more clear than that of the grass. The Beadle’s “face expressed horror and indignation” (Woolf 341) as he approached Virginia when she walked on the turf. She is smart, sharp, and a professor. Her intelligence might be of a quite distance from some men. But she is a woman; and women’s feet were unfit to walk on the grass, just like women were unfit for all sorts of things. That must have been it.

What draws a reader into this piece is mainly the stream of conciousness style of writing. It provides the reader a direct look into the mind of a mother of an adolescent girl. Her thoughts mainly focus on teaching her daughter certain skills she will need as an adult woman. Troughout the mother’s thought process she warns her daughter away from becoming a slut because she believes that this is the worst thing a woman could be. I find this quite interesting considering the time period it came from and the background of the author. Kincaid was raised in a family that shunned her academic skills, and within the borders of Antigua where women’s skills outside the household weren’t held to high regard.

Unfortunately Kincaid’s writing comes from a time when women were held to a different standard from men, even moreso than they are today. One thing this piece brings up is the mother’s serious concern that her adolescent daughter will become a slut. It’s a strange double standard to have, why wouldn’t an adolescent boy deserve the same warning? What exactly makes it okay for a man to act like a slut and not a woman? When reading Kincaid’s piece that is exactly what her mother’s echoed words make me think of. Kincaid wrote this in 1978 yet how different would a mother’s thought process be today? Maybe it would get a modern day update to compensate for the advances in technology but I feel like the message about not growing up to be a slut will stay the same. It’s quite unfortunate that to this day we still have such a strange obsession as a society to keep our women “pure”.