Browsing by Subject "Díaz, Junot, 1968- -- Criticism and interpretation"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Drowning in Empathy: Rewriting Dominican Masculinity
    (2015) Franceschi, Kayla Marie; Solomon, Asali
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    El poder de la lengua: cómo la lengua desafía las jerarquías establecidas dentro de las obras de Junot Díaz
    (2013) McPherson, Shannon; Lopez-Sanchez, Ana; Castillo Sandoval, Roberto
    Siguiendo la transición de la familia de Yunior en los cuentos por Junot Díaz, podemos ver la significancia de la lengua hablada y también no hablada – el silencio. No hay nada fuera de lo normal en su historia, pero sobre lo que voy a enfocar es el cambio de poder en relación a la lengua. Tras los cuentos de Drown y de This is How You Lose Her por Junot Díaz, la historia de inmigración y sus luchas son aparentes. Vemos cómo la lengua cambia, mejor dicho, permite cambios en las relaciones familiares, y como las ideas de las normas y las reglas se desafían. Siempre hay una lucha entre las expectativas y lo real. La lengua cambia la estructura de poder en dos grupos: género, y en tradiciones – la vieja (La República Dominicana) versus la nueva (Los EEUU). Y lo que podemos ver son los conflictos acerca de estos grupos.
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    Fukú and Zafa: Oppression and Redemption through Language in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
    (2013) Martínez, Gabrielle D.; Mohan, Rajeswari
    In Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the romantic failures of an overweight Dominican nerd are attributed to an all-encompassing curse that is passed through generations and across national borders. Intrinsically tied to the violent legacy of slavery, colonialism, greedy dictatorships, and political corruption, the curse, referred to as the fukú, is much more than a supernatural entity in the novel; the fukú and its antidote, zafa, function as conceptual mechanisms through which characters engage with their worlds and make sense of their diasporic experiences. By first elucidating the restrictive and liberating effects of the fukú and zafa, respectively, on the characters’ mentalities and then showing how these same dynamics are repeated in the language of the novel, this essay posits that the dialectic between the fukú and zafa reveal both the imprisoning and freeing effects of discourse and narrative in the construction of life stories.
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    La lealtad e inseguridad lingüística dentro de la diáspora dominicana y la manifestación de esta dualidad a través de la literatura de Junot Díaz
    (2014) Legros, Natalie; Castillo Sandoval, Roberto
    Dominican-Americans, with respect to their language identities, have been battling with a duality. On one hand, they appear to demonstrate high levels of language loyalty; that is to say, they are proud of speaking Spanish because it is a part of what makes them who they are and allows them to stay connected to their cultural roots. On the other hand, they appear to have high levels of linguistic insecurity due to the many negative socio-linguistic attitudes that other Spanish speakers (who are not of Dominican descent) have towards Dominican Spanish. Internalizing these negative attitudes, Dominican-Americans have come to project an inferiority complex towards using their language outside the home, and have used it to bring each other down. For example, this is why several Dominican-Americans claim that they speak Spanish, but not proper Spanish. This duality is a result of Dominican cultural whitening: as Dominicans deny the blackness in their culture, they simultaneously deny the blackness (African elements integrated) in their language. Dominican linguists from the early 1900s such as Pedro Henríquez Ureña have made Dominican Spanish appear to be homogenous, but it is far from that. Language loyalty and linguistic insecurity should not go hand in hand. If Dominican-Americans care so much about their “Dominicanness,” then why can’t they fully embrace it for what it really is, instead of just accepting a part of it? In my thesis, I explain in further detail the origins and the influences of this duality and aim to provide a better representation of Dominican language identity. While doing so, I talk about Junot Díaz, a critically acclaimed Dominican-American author who used to be insecure about his language but overcame this insecurity by gaining control of his language in the translation process. This is manifested in the second Spanish translation of his collection of short stories, Drown.
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