This paper examines Junot Díaz's short story collection Drown as a lens through which to understand contemporary immigrant experience in the United States. Drawing on historical demographic evidence, the paper argues that immigration has always been foundational to the American Dream, and that current anti-immigrant sentiment echoes earlier hostilities directed at European immigrants. It traces the parallels between the struggles of Díaz's Dominican-American characters — poverty, racism, cultural uprootedness — and the experiences of earlier immigrant groups, ultimately contending that restricting immigration threatens the very ideals that define America.
This paper demonstrates the technique of contextual literary analysis — reading a literary work not in isolation but against a documented historical and sociological backdrop. By citing demographic scholarship (Pagnini and Morgan; Edmonston and Passel) alongside textual evidence from Díaz's stories, the writer shows how fiction can illuminate and be illuminated by empirical research.
The paper opens with a three-paragraph introduction that states the thesis and previews each section. The first body section surveys the racial and ethnic diversity of early American immigration, using scholarly sources to challenge the myth of a homogenous white founding population. The second body section analyzes specific stories from Drown, connecting characters' experiences to the historical patterns established in the previous section. The conclusion synthesizes both threads and reaffirms the central argument that protecting the American Dream requires openness to immigration.
Junot Díaz's Drown is a collection of stories that depict the contemporary misery and urban despair that can grow from poverty and "uprootedness" from one's own cultural setting. Díaz's protagonists are immigrants from the Dominican Republic, many of whom are coming of age in a polarized America. Their stories are all the more relevant and poignant in light of recent proposals for immigration reform and ongoing challenges to the American Dream.
This paper argues that immigration is a foundation of the American Dream, and that recent clampdowns on immigration quotas and other immigrant-unfriendly measures threaten that Dream. The current backlash against immigrants is, in fact, a historical recurrence. As Díaz shows, however, the vast majority of immigrants to this country arrive with hopes of building a better life and contributing to their new homeland. Therefore, to ensure that the American Dream endures, the United States government should avoid the false panacea of immigration clampdowns.
The first part of this paper examines the intersections of race and immigration in American history, discussing how, contrary to prevailing notions that all early immigrants were "white," early immigration was characterized by the same population diversity seen today. The paper then turns to the protagonists of Díaz's Drown, arguing that the issues faced by the characters — poverty, uprootedness, racism — closely resemble those faced by the earliest immigrants to this country. The conclusion argues that the United States has long benefited from this cycle of immigration, assimilation, and change, and that immigration is therefore an intrinsic part of the American Dream that should be allowed to continue.
Conventional wisdom holds that immigrants have always viewed the United States as a land of opportunity, and that they flocked here in search of a better life. While anti-immigrant activists today decry a perceived lack of assimilation and "American identity," historical examples have shown that assimilation takes time — sometimes generations — even for the European immigrants who arrived in the earliest days of this country.
In Colonial America, prevailing wisdom maintains that the population of the thirteen colonies was comprised overwhelmingly of white immigrants and settlers from England. Demographic studies have long challenged this claim, however. Over one-fifth of the 1790s population — an estimated 800,000 people — was African-American, a group that consisted of both enslaved people and freemen (Pagnini and Morgan: 411). In addition, population surveys conducted in the late eighteenth century often failed to account for the substantial Native American population living in independent settlements.
More recent demographic studies further challenge assertions of a homogenous white, British culture in colonial America. While early estimates suggested that up to 80% of the white population in the 1790s was English, more recent scholarship holds that a significant number were actually of Celtic, German, and other European nationalities (Pagnini and Morgan: 415). Though all would be considered "white" by today's standards, not all of these immigrants enjoyed equal social acceptance.
By the 1800s, one-third of the American population was composed of immigrants and their children — figures that reveal the considerable diversity present at the dawn of America and confirm that immigration was an intrinsic part of the American Dream from the very beginning. Not every pre-1900 immigrant was considered simply "white," either. Variations in European ancestry may seem trivial today, but in the 1790s there was significant tension among people of various European descents. Americans of English extraction were critical of how ethnic diversity was threatening the culture of the new colonies, and many sought to limit immigration, criticizing newcomers for maintaining their own ethnic enclaves and clinging to their native languages.
Even prominent Americans such as Benjamin Franklin decried the "Palatine Boors" for their supposed Germanizing of the Pennsylvania province and for the group's refusal to learn English (Edmonston and Passel: 122). Race and immigration were thus very much intertwined, even at a time when all immigrants to this country were supposedly "white." In the case of Italians, for example, new arrivals were derided for their dusky skin, their large families, and their loud manners. Americans of English ancestry openly doubted that such people would ever assimilate into the United States. Today, however, it is nearly impossible to conceive of an American society without the contributions of German-Americans or Italian-Americans.
These historical examples have strong implications for immigration today, and for Ysrael, Rafa, Yunior, and the many other characters in Díaz's stories. It is also worth noting that while Díaz writes in a voice that is strongly and uniquely Dominican-American, he writes of situations and insights that would be familiar to immigrants of any era.
Díaz's descriptions highlight the cyclical nature of immigration and the American Dream. Historical examples have already shown that earlier "white" immigrants were discriminated against based on their skin color and lack of English skills — discrimination that encouraged many to cluster into their own communities. More than two hundred years later, the cycles of discrimination built on skin color and language, and the resultant de facto segregation, continue.
And yet one of the wonders of Díaz's stories is the universality of his characters' lives. What child today could not relate to an older sibling's sometimes vicious teasing? With the divorce rate hovering near 50% of all marriages, many families would recognize the power of Díaz's understatement in "Fiesta 1980." The complicated feelings of longing and resentment expressed by Yunior toward his absent father in "Aguantando" stir strong emotions — and perhaps even recognition — in many children raised without a present father.
In many of his stories, Díaz directly addresses the issue of rising crime rates among immigrants. Anti-immigrant voices today tend to portray newcomers as vectors of disease and crime — a charge that has been leveled in every previous wave of immigration as well. For Díaz, the problem of crime cannot be disentangled from the poverty that so often results from the racism and lack of opportunity prevalent in immigrant communities. In "Aurora," for example, the protagonist turns to drug dealing after a lifetime of hopelessness; deprived of positive role models and raised in poverty, is it any surprise that drug dealing becomes his only visible path to income?
Díaz also confronts preconceived notions about inner-city immigrants in "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie." The narrator imagines the reactions of a suburban mother to the idea that her daughter is dating a dark-skinned inner-city boy. Yet, as the story demonstrates, white middle-class suburban residents need not fear city-bred immigrants; there is an underlying sameness to all aspects of family life that transcends neighborhood and skin color.
In summary, Díaz's stories are set within the cycle of immigrant struggle. Many of his characters are undergoing the same struggles previously experienced by European immigrants since the founding of this country. It would be difficult to deny the massive contributions that German-Americans and Italian-Americans have made to this nation, even in spite of the fierce opposition once directed at their presence.
Today, immigrants like Díaz's Ysrael and Yunior face the same struggles and the same vicious opposition. On a wider scale, their experiences would be familiar to immigrants across the country — people who come to the United States to contribute their talents and ideas. The broader history of immigration policy and public attitudes reflects these recurring tensions between openness and restriction.
Díaz's stories are ultimately an argument for keeping the American Dream open — for his characters and for the vast majority of immigrants who choose to come to the United States. Much of this country's progress stems from its historical openness to immigrants. To safeguard the American Dream, therefore, means keeping its ideals open to all.
Diaz, Junot. Drown. New York: Riverhead, 1997.
Edmonston, B. and J. Passel, eds. Immigration and Ethnicity: The Integration of America's Newest Arrivals. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 1994.
Pagnini, D. and S.P. Morgan. "Intermarriage and Social Distance Among Immigrants at the Turn of the Century." American Journal of Sociology 96 (1990): 405–32.
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