" which offers a tongue-in-cheek 'guide' to the different facades required for dating different types of girls. The chapter highlights the impact of cultural differences in constructing impressions but, perhaps more importantly, demonstrates the extent to which the narrator feels he must go to conceal the most embarrassing dimensions of his family's poverty. Here, the narrator begins the chapter by advising, "clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. If the girl's from the Terrace stack the boxes behind the milk. If she's from the Park or Society Hill hide the cheese in the cabinet above the oven, way up where she'll never see. . . Take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the campo, especially the one with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope leash. . . Put the basket with all the crapped on toilet paper under the sink. Spray the bucket with Lysol, then close the cabinet." (Diaz) Even where the subject of the chapter is not abject misery, the author carries a sense of resentment that is contained in the details of his counsel. This is consistent with the idea expressed in the review by Eder (1996) that the text as a whole reads like a stirring indictment of the American Dream, particularly in terms of its elusiveness for the immigrant set. According to the Los Angeles Times reviewer, "Diaz's anger, his need to report the desperate details, can read like a denunciation before a judge, with the reader as both judge and accused." (Eder)

The anger that Diaz conveys through Yunior's experiences, and those of his otherwise unnamed narratives such as the abusive, drug-dealing character in "Aurora," is perhaps most driven by a sense of resentment at having been misled. For the immigrant family such as the author's, bright and cheery promises about the United States and its attendant opportunities would give way to a cruel and demeaning existence. Thus, even if the text is culled from a significant amount of childhood reminiscence, "Diaz's narrative space...

. . is dominated not by nostalgic recreations of idealized childhood landscapes, but by the bleak, barren, and decayed margins of New Jersey's inner cities. Diaz, whom critics have praised for his acute powers of observation, has a sharp eye for the social and human blight that has resulted from urban neglect. The trajectory of his characters' lives mirrors Diaz's own observations and experiences in this setting." (Paravisini-Geber, p. 264)
To an extent that can be felt throughout the text, Diaz recognizes that his capacity to tell the story that unifies that narratives in Drown denotes a certain irony. Even as he criticizes the American Dream, he has become an example of its capacity to deliver in glorious proportion. For his family's suffering, he notes in an interview with Barrios (2007), he has become a highly celebrated figure in literature. However, the results of his struggle are highly rarified. The struggle itself is, by contrast, all too common. And this is the reality that makes Drown so important. Today, we are historically removed by many degrees from the glowing promises that helped us to collectively invent the American Dream. This is especially so because the immigrant experience is no longer a minority experience, even if it remains characterized as such. Instead, this experience, or the experience of otherness in a more general sense, is far more commonplace than the attainment of the material, social and political status promised by the American Dream. Diaz demonstrates that the commonality of this experience is a great crime of inequality and neglect.

Works Cited:

Barrios, G. (2007). Guest Interview: Junot Diaz. La Bloga.

Diaz, J. (1996). Drown. Riverhead Trade.

Eder, R. (1996). An Artist in Transit: Drown, by Junot Diaz. Los Angeles Times.

Gates, D. (1996). English Lessons. The New York Times.

Paravisini-Gebert, L. (2000). Junot Diaz's Drown: Revisiting 'Those Mean Streets.' U.S.…