I didn't speak English, and I experienced the competitiveness of America, and it's a profoundly cruel childhood culture.” ĭíaz attended Kean College in Union, New Jersey for one year before transferring and ultimately completing his B.A. The people living in his neighborhood, Díaz says, were 'colorful, poor, working, and transitional,' and the area itself was 'no joke,' but his family was 'already accustomed to a very rough-and-tumble upbringing.' Of himself, Díaz says, 'I was a child.

first, got a job at a Reynolds aluminum warehouse in Elizabeth, N.J., and Díaz, his mother, and four siblings followed five years later in 1974. It makes recollection very, very sharp.' Díaz's father came to the U.S. When asked if he remembers the experience, he says: 'If I burn your entire country down, would you remember being six or seven? There is nothing like the trauma of losing one's country and gaining another.

Drown is dedicated to his mother, Virtudes Díaz.ĭíaz was born in the Dominican Republic and came with his family to New Jersey when he was a young boy. ĭrown precedes his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the short story collection This Is How You Lose Her. Drown was published by Riverhead Books in 1996. The stories are set in the context of 1980s America, and are narrated by an adult who is looking back at his childhood. Drown is the semi-autobiographical, debut short story collection from Dominican-American author Junot Díaz that address the trials of Dominican immigrants as they attempt to find some semblance of the American Dream after immigrating to America.

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