Drowning in Identity Formation

Angela Vander Velde
Aug 31, 2018 · 14 min read

In the social jungle of human existence,

there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.

-Erik Erikson


Answering the big “Who am I?” question is a relatively intangible statement, more often than not one’s identity has to do with some sort of social status rather than the box you check on the census. There is also the complication of who or what we align our identity to, which can vary based on our surrounding environments, such as school, work, home, etc. Identifying as an American is an arguably complicated idea because the United States of America doesn’t have one individual ‘culture,’ it is a “melting pot” of many cultures. This immediately complicates any discussion of assimilation or immigration because it implies that Americans are living with “hyphenated” identities. In addition to living in a diversity accommodating country, individuals within this “nation of immigrants” must deal with discrimination and prejudice from sub-groups within their own communities. In a critical look at Junot Diaz’ Drown, this article with attempt to uncover the nature of evolving identities found in various perspectives of Dominican Republic immigrant men. It will also explore the often alienating immigration experience in the United States of America and its effect on the adaptable identities of characters who are already heavily complicated by factors such as parental abandonment, race relations, poverty, and government citizenship requirements.

It is important to emphasize that identity is a constantly contested phenomenon. We are, as theorist Stuart Hall articulates, without “any stable identities — either group (like class) or personal (like ethnicity). Identity for [Hall] is always in the process of being constituted by prevailing social norms, institutions, and subject positions, as well as by particular struggles against those would-be determinants. Identity, in other words, is a battleground, where the meaning of social life is being forged and contested” (Leitch 1781). This definition is effective in looking at Diaz’ Drown because it allows us to look closely at the “prevailing social norms, institutions, and subject positions” which complicate and challenge characters’ identity formation.

Diaz’ linked short story narrative aesthetic is complimentary to the multifaceted nature of identity. The Los Angeles Times’ review of Diaz’ Drown eloquently explains the complexity of the book, “Panoramic and yet achingly personal. Impossible to categorize…Diaz’s novel is a hell of a book. It doesn’t care about categories. It’s densely populated; it’s obsessed with language. It’s Dominican and American, not about immigration but diaspora, in which one family’s dramas are entwined with a nation’s.” Drown is a fictional short story collection, but it can also be considered a nonfiction document about all immigrants, not just Diaz’ Dominican Republic characters. Diaz uses the inventiveness of short story fiction to add multiple layers of complexity in a relatively shorter span. He addresses various experiences of identity formation in stories as short as six pages, such as in “Boyfriend” where the narrator struggles to identify with his downstairs neighbors, “People like these were untouchables to me, raised on some other planet and then transplanted into my general vicinity to remind me how bad I was living” (Diaz 112). Other stories are as long as thirty pages, such as “Negocios,” where readers finally learn of Ramon de las Casas’ unrelenting struggle to find his “American dream” and feeling “like a tourist” in his own homeland (Diaz 198). Throughout the ten short story fictions Diaz creates an engaging verisimilitude of identity formation experiences from the perspective of Dominican Republic males.

Although many would argue that Junot Diaz draws a lot of these stories on truth, especially his seeming alter ego, Yunior, it is imperative to emphasize that he is giving his readers a verisimilitude, a convincingly realistic narrative style. Also, just because Diaz is a Dominican American author, does not make his work purely autobiographical. His characters are fictionalized, and easy to identify with because of their authentic “real life” circumstances. Diaz’ style doesn’t romanticizing the immigrant experience, his language is vivid, harsh, and believable, making for an enthralling reader experience. This type of realism-narrative ‘honesty’ is definitely a contributing factor to how readers empathize with the struggles of characters within the book.

In addition to this verisimilitude style Diaz also uses many Spanish words throughout the stories, which may be difficult for English-speaking readers, but it shows his consciousness of a multilingual and multicultural audience. Although this ‘spanglish’ aesthetic may not be appealing to all readers it shows Diaz’ awareness of the existence of hybrid identities. He is revealing, in his language, the inherent duality of a Dominican Republic immigrant in America, but also creating a wider representation of anyone who is bilingual. Articulating about a country known for its accommodation of diversity and a multitude of cultures, it would be preposterous to require just one represented language.

To continue with the hybridized style which starts with the ‘spanglish’ language, Diaz creates the union of two seemingly dissimilar brothers, Yunior and Rafa. The influence of siblings on identity formation is prevalent in these characters and they demonstrate how race relations can be found within a one’s own community. In the first short story, “Ysreal,” Yunior describes how Rafa “had about five hundred routines he liked to lay on [him]. Most of them had to do with [his] complexion, [his] hair, the size of [his] lips. ‘It’s the Haitian,’ he’d say to his buddies. ‘Hey Señor Haitian, Mami found you on the border and only took you in because she felt sorry for you” (Diaz 5). Rafa’s ‘antihaitian’ attitude is only prevalent in the city, where he doesn’t have his “buddies” who “liked to knock around [their] neighbors” (Diaz 5). This speaks to the existence of an “Other” found within the expectedly accepting sphere of family. Rafa and. his friends seem to fuel each other’s hatred of anyone they deem lesser than themselves, for one reason or another, and Yunior is emphasized as different to them in his Haitian ethnicity.

A closer analysis of this first chapter shows how Yunior’s brief connection with Ysreal represents an attempt at finding an identifiable and positive support system amongst similarly oppressive dominions. Yunior and Ysreal are marginalized for ‘looking different’ within their respective communities, allowing the possibility to bond in a shared identity. Ursula K. LeGuin’s arguments on the “Other” is a great way to analyze the discrimination that these characters, and arguably all, face within their families and ethnic communities. Being an outsider “Other,” as LeGuin defines it, is “the being who is different from yourself…different from you in its sex; or in its annual income; or in its way of speaking and dressing and doing things; or in the color of its skin, or in the number of its legs and heads” (LeGuin 208–209). This rather universal definition rings true for Yunior and Ysreal, who have been called “pendejo” (literally meaning “idiot”) and “ugly” for circumstances beyond their control. Yunior is powerless against Rafa, who gets mad and calls Yunior names when they are in the Capital, but in “the campo [they] were friends;” this shows how Rafa is changing his identifiable behavior in different environments (Diaz 5). Being alone in the countryside seems to reroot the boys back to their solitary and familial identities with each other. Moreso in Rafa’s case, who has friends in the city, whereas Yunior has only the confusing ridicule from his brother.

Then there is Ysreal who wears a mask to conceal his damaged face, which was “skinned…like an orange” by a hog when he was just a baby (Diaz 7). Although Diaz has taken six pages to arrive at the narrative for which the story is named, Ysreal serves as another form of LeGuin’s “Other” because he is abnormally different to everyone else for wearing a mask. Also, the fact that Ysreal wears a mask is important to readers’ understanding that he has been singled out as ‘different,’ both in a literal sense because he is concealing his true identity, but also in a metaphorical sense because the mask is representational of disability which the other boys equate to him being attackable and lesser then them.

Rafa’s negative impact as the only present male role model for Yunior creates a detrimental effect on both their brotherly relationship and their individual identity formations. The way that Rafa orders Yunior around, to get free bus rides and tricking Ysreal so that they can see his face, demonstrates how, even in the presumedly caring and supportive familial sphere, power dynamics are exercised by virtually everyone. Now perhaps Rafa is simply being the “older and wiser” brother to Yunior, but that analogy in itself shows how the brothers occupy identities such as ‘leader’ and ‘follower.’ LeGuin explains how this differentiating “denie[s] its spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality. You have, in fact, alienated yourself” (LeGuin 209). Although LeGuin’s theories are originally applied to a Science Fiction context, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that the psychology of these brothers is applicable to how environmental changes and power relationships change a person’s identifiable behavior.

Diaz’ introductory pages about two contrasting brothers, rough and tough Rafa and his young and naive brother, Yunior, sets up how the rest of the stories will develop its characters, all of which experience differently polarizing identity formations. Though Rafa has questionable morals and Yunior feels “too young to understand most of what he said, but I listened to him anyway, in case these things might be useful in the future,” Yunior has no one else to influence him because their father is absent from their lives (Diaz 6). Yunior is looking for a sense of belonging with his brother and goes along with Rafa’s attempts to unmask Ysreal because he has no other source of excitement or learning. Diaz seems to be enforcing the importance of this brotherhood to young Yunior and is also illustrating how a unified family or healthy brotherhood is important to the formative years of a thriving family and brothers dealing with migration struggles. If Yunior learns from Rafa that it is okay to swindle and steal his way through life then that is what he will most likely do. Though they are being resourceful to take care of themselves, they are also using illegal means.

Readers can identify with Yunior’s innocence and internal struggle because Diaz writes this chapter in Yunior’s first person perspective. Establishing Yunior as this naive and impressionable narrator shows readers the harsh reality of a poverty-ridden, lonely child of the Dominican Republic and makes us sympathetic to his circumstances. Diaz shows Yunior’s naïveté on page nine where Yunior exclaims how he “had never been sad more that a few hours and the thought of that sensation lasting a lifetime scared the hell out of [him].” However, Diaz then surprises readers by inserting how Yunior once “pegged Ysreal with a rock” (Diaz 14). This contrast is an effective tool in illustrating Yunior’s struggle to form a clear division between right and wrong amongst “the other boys” in the city and the shared vulnerability he finds with Ysreal in the countryside. As readers, we have the epiphany that Yunior is actually a lot like Rafa, they both change their identifiable behaviors based on the people they are around and the different environments they occupy. The only stability is that they are sharing similar struggles; Rafa is seemingly kinder to his brother in the countryside versus his blatant abusiveness in the city, while Yunior is also, arguably, more compliant to his brother and friendlier to Ysreal in the countryside versus angry and fighting with his brother in the city. Ysreal is one of the only sources of difference that Rafa can ridicule in the countryside, and even Yunior complies with his brother’s demands if it means he will not be abused like he is in the city.

Diaz’ Ramon de las Casas narrative spans a central part of the book, especially given the fact that any story involving Yunior or Rafa has also been effected by their father’s impact on their lives. The initial failed father-husband expectation is completely deconstructed in the last and, arguably, foremost story of the collection. In “Negocios,” and similarly in many of the other short stories, Diaz writes in third person, creating the implication that there is no single point of view, making it feel ambiguous. This leaves the reader to decide their own opinion about Ramon’s decisions or lack-there-of. All previous build ups of Ramon as absent and unfaithful to his family are inverted in a way that makes readers question their own judgements. This is a clever authorial device that creates a wider metaphor for how initial expectations of people (based on their race, ethnicity, actions, etc) can be inaccurate or incorrect. As it turns out, Ramon was conflicted by his promise to bring his family to North America and the life he starts with Nilda. While living in his first American city, Miami, Ramon is demeaned by the “gleeful criticisms” of his apartment-mate, Eulalio, who he calls “the Devil” (Diaz 172–173). The way Eulalio uses Ramon’s naïveté to his benefit, not paying equal rent and not working as much because he has the car that “brought them to work every morning,” is demonstrative of the effect that power relations have on Ramon’s attempt to work and be “proud of his own upkeep” (Diaz 170). This absence of fairness creates the inclination that having an advantage in America gives you the right to abuse the less fortunate. Faced with the immediate injustice of Eulalio is tough and Ramon chooses not to identify with the indifference of his other flat-mates who reply to his uproar, “Life smacks everybody around” (Diaz 174). This initial adversity from people within his similarly struggling immigrant group is telling of Ramon’s later development as a conflicted Dominican American trying to “make it” in New York. Once there, he again finds comfort in people who share his ethnicity, but he is also contested by his evolution into a predominantly English-speaking U.S. Citizen. Ramon, like all human beings, is imperfect, he is a flawed and selfish man, and anyone connected to him is effected by his struggle to reject or embrace his Dominican heritage. It is only towards the end of the story that Diaz reveals “Negocios” as Yunior’s point of view, he is learning and trying to understand his father’s perspective so that he can reform his family; he discovers his father’s struggles to work hard to bring his Dominican family to the U.S., but also his loss of motivation in starting an American life with Nilda.

Another related avenue to add to the discussion of identity formation in Dominican Republic immigrants is the government requirements involved in the process to become a U.S. citizen. Looking at Ramon’s struggle to gain U.S. Citizenship shows how legality can be skirted both immediately and/or after the “naturalization process.” In the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ A Guide to Naturalization, they specify many noteworthy requirements of a prospective U.S. Citizen that can be compared to Ramon. The guide requires immigrants to recognize their responsibility to;

Give up all prior allegiance to any other nation or sovereignty. Swear allegiance to the United States; Support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; and Serve the country when required…America becomes stronger when all of its citizens respect the different opinions, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions found in this country. Tolerance for differences is also a responsibility of citizenship (U.S. of America 3)

This requirement to “give up all prior allegiance to any other nation or sovereignty [and] Swear allegiance to the United States” implies a strong loyalty to the U.S.A, but would only apply to those immigrants who honestly love or need the opportunities (economic and social) provided in America and not in their ‘foreign’ homeland (Speaking as a native-born U.S. Citizen, I identify with and have patriotism in my country, but I don’t align myself with all aspects of the government, as I’m sure many other native-born citizens feel as well). Then the responsibilities seem to nearly contradict themselves in saying that American citizens must “respect the different opinions, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions found in this country. Tolerance for differences,” which would mean that there are differences in all citizens, old and new, but it is not overreaching to say that differences in allegiance will occur as well, especially when new-citizen immigrants (and native-born citizens too) are subject to alienation and ridicule. Our country is riddled with cultures of opposing beliefs and asking for “tolerance” is noble, but far fetched. Characters such as Ramon demonstrate how the American system has hindered him from the get go simply because they are non-native immigrants. Although Ramon is “here (in America) to work,” he is also trying to remain allegiant to his family back in Santo Domingo (Diaz 168).

These government requirements influence the decisions of characters and the immigrant population that Diaz is representing. For example, Ramon’s attempt to gain citizenry was thwarted multiple times before he could “Find a citizen, get married, wait, and then divorce her,” which was the “well practiced and expensive and riddled with swindlers” illegality that he seemed to need (Diaz 178). This willingness to turn to forbidden means to become a U.S. Citizen is telling of how difficult it is for poverty stricken immigrants to integrate themselves into America, especially given the “$680 naturalization fee,” which is “non-refundable even if you withdraw your application or if your case is denied” (U.S. Of America 53). Many already economically sore individuals entering the U.S.A. would find this fee devastating, especially if their application is denied, so it is unsurprising that such illegalities are taken. However, in Ramon’s case his prolonged transformation into a U.S. citizen created a distanced sense of diaspora from his homeland, family, and culture. Upon visiting his “patria” (homeland), Ramon felt “the poverty…familiar and a stifling…[in a place] where he no longer belonged” (Diaz 198). This shows Ramon’s conflicted cultural identity because although he recognizes his familiarity with impoverished Santo Domingo, he feels classified away from it now that he is a U.S. citizen, with a new family.

Further discussion of Ramon’s struggle to identify as wholly American must also reflect on the controversial issue of assimilation. Assimilation, briefly defined in “an early and influential definition…by the two sociologists Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, [is] a process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons or groups, and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life” (Gordon 62). In fewer words and as it applies to our discussion of Dominican Republic immigrants, assimilation helps immigrants integrate themselves in a usually white dominant culture so that they feel like they are part of a community and not like they are outsiders. This acquisition of a “common cultural life” is requiring immigrants to adopt a whole new set of cultural ideologies and beliefs so that they can identify as an American. Acquiring a ‘common cultural life’ is a rather broad definition of assimilation. It can be argued that Ramon has found commonalities with Nilda because she was “like so many Dominicans,” but that he struggles with his identity as a father and husband to his family in Santo Domingo (Diaz 182). This is a major factor to this assimilation discussion, an immigrant’s willingness to accept American culture and integrate themselves in a new country depends on their context upon entering America, such as how strong their ties are to their home culture, or being befriended, but even with a positive support system (family, native-born friends) immigrants face challenges. Characters such as Ramon appear incapable of an assimilated integration in America without positive development within his own family. Diaz’ rather pessimistic narrative about Dominican Republic immigrants seems to support how assimilation in America is detrimental our adaptable identities.

In a world where you can be anything, there are multiple ways to identify who you are and the most accurate and cliché advice is to try to be yourself, a self that is constantly evolving and shaping meaning with every changing second. Assimilation doesn’t have to be a loss of one’s culture and heritage, and immigrants aren’t necessarily at a disadvantage if they don’t completely assimilate to one culture over another, they simply identify with both cultures and heritages. Diaz creates various characters with different circumstances surrounding their immigration into America, but they are all impressionable males who are trying to find meaning in their lives. Moving anywhere is difficult for anyone, it destabilizes you and demands adaptability which may not be present in all people. For immigrants, we can imagine, this adaptation is constant until they “make it” in America. It is daunting, but also enlightening to realize that finding one’s identity is constantly contested by submersion and absorption of countless cultures and ideologies, the sensation may feel, as Diaz seems to imply, a lot like drowning.

Works Cited

Díaz, Junot. Drown. New York: Riverhead, 1996. Print.

Gordon, Milton Myron. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York: Oxford UP, 1964. ProQuest. Web. 7 May 2016.

LeGuin, Ursula K. “American SF and the Other.” Science Fiction Studies 2.3 (1975): 208–10. JSTOR. Web. 11 May 2016.

Leitch, Vincent B. “Stuart Hall B. 1932.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2001. 1779–781. Print.

United States of America. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A Guide to Naturalization. USA.gov, 22 Jan. 2013. Web. 7 May 2016.

Angela Vander Velde

Writer. Dreamer. Daughter of Christ. Gryffindor. Nerd. *please enjoy reading some of my explorations and perspectives.

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