Drown

Yunior is the beating heart of this collection of stories. As a child, his physical fragility, his nerdiness, and his emotional sensitivity place him squarely at odds with both a hyper masculine father and brother, and a patriarchal society at large. Micro- and macro-level expectations dictate that he must be tough, that he must come into a heterosexual sexuality early, that he must participate in the brutal congress of proving his masculinity to and with other men by objectifying women and spurning tenderness. These supposed mandates are diametrically opposed to his inherent characteristics.

In both “Ysrael” and “Fiesta, 1980,” we see a Yunior who is a child struggling against these expectations. Even as a child, he is aware of what he is expected to be. And, even as a child, we see him caught between honoring his own emotional vulnerability and tender love for his family and working to gain the approval of a father who wishes only for him to deny himself those to traits in order to become a stereotypical version of machismo personified. By the time “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” arrives in the collection, Yunior has come into adolescence, and is fastidiously coaching himself on how to leave his former self behind, so that he may enact and perform a more “ideal” masculine identity.