Díaz captures a sense of nostalgia and longing as the young man remembers his childhood days with his friend Beto, all mixed up with a sense of failure. The unnamed young man in this story avoids a childhood friend returning to the neighborhood, not only because of ambiguous sexual feelings, but also because he feels a failure. There are a couple of stories that really did it for me, but Drown is the one story that really grabbed me. 'Aurora,' 'Drown,' 'Boyfriend,' 'Edison, New Jersey,' 'How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie.' and 'No Face,' in my opinion the weakest story of the bunch, is related to the short story Ysrael but only because the main character Ysrael is the central focus, but he is not related to the family in the story with that title.

Some of the stories are connected and follow a family, a mother and two boys, from the Dominican Republic to New Jersey after their father sends for them: ' Ysrael,' ' Fiesta 1980,' ' Aguantando,' ' Negocios.' Other short stories are ambiguous in that the main characters are unnamed and could be attributed to other immigrant young men. And yes it's important to note that he does focus on the male experience and point of view. In Drown, Díaz focuses on the struggles, frustrations, anger and needs faced by poor immigrant Dominican boys, young men, and adult males, both in the Dominican Republic and in New Jersey. His voice is strong and he obviously knows the subject matter. Junot Díaz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is better known for his work on the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.īorn in the Dominican Republic and raised in the United States, Diaz follows in the footsteps of other Latin American writers with this collection of short stories.

Originally published in 1996, Drown by Junot Díaz is a book composed of ten short stories, some of them previously published in literary magazines and other venues.

Negocios junot diaz summary