Narrative Approaches of "How to

¶ … narrative approaches of "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie" by Junot Diaz and "To Da-duh, in Memoriam" by Paule Marshall Both the stories "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie" by Junot Diaz and "To Da-duh, in Memoriam" by Paule Marshall use unconventional storytelling techniques to highlight their themes. Diaz' story does not even make use of a conventional plot structure. Instead, Diaz creates an 'instructional manual format' to ironically and critically analyze notions of race and gender in American society.

"To Da-duh, in Memoriam" by Paule Marshall uses an unreliable nine-year-old narrator to create an atmospheric portrait of the child's social world and to contrast the protagonist's American, New York perspective with that of her grandmother's. Diaz mocks common, stereotypical notions of race by instructing the presumably male, likely non-white reader in the correct social 'etiquette' to observe when dating different racial and ethnic groups.

He counsels the reader to hide all the pictures of himself sporting an Afro and to "run a hand through your hair like the white boys do even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa." White girls, he implies, like a black man who behaves slightly more 'white' even when they are also attracted by a man's blackness. And of course, creating a pretence of higher social class is required when dating whites: at all costs, hide the subsidized government cheese lurking in the refrigerator.

Diaz combines potentially offensive stereotypes with poetry (Africa 'running through' the reader's hair, for example) and by taking such ideas to the extreme, he shows their absurdity. However, with an African-American girl, Diaz suggests, there is less of a need to engage in such drama. Beneath his sarcasm there is poignancy: Diaz implies that African-American men may not value members of their own race or class as much, as is also reflected in Diaz's reference to 'pretending' to have hair that can be run through with one's fingers.

But by using an 'instructional,' distanced format, the reader is able to both laugh and sigh at the same time, as the implied meaning of Diaz's phrases is slightly softened by the harshness of the satiric tone. The use of deliberately offensive terms like 'halfie' indicates Diaz's dual project of parodying racial and gender norms while also showing the humanity behind them.

Even when talking about dating whites, Diaz elides the two words together, to suggest the way that people speak: whitegirls, he says, are easy and "give it up," a "halfie will tell you that her parents met in the [civil rights] movement," showing a sly mockery that the reader is only interested in how to get the girl in bed, not to hear about the serious effects of the civil rights movement on black and white people's lives.

Diaz's story shows the complex, contradictory, and often offensive stereotypes society has about women of different colors by taking on the voice of someone who embraces such stereotypes. "To Da-duh, in Memoriam" takes on the voice of a child to portray a lost world, that.