Symposium Day: Extra Credit

   I went to your second period poetry workshop for Ava's Smile.  I wouldn't say I love hearing and writing poetry, but I think that this workshop really changed my perspective on what poetry really means to some people.  Several of the BHSEC students wrote poems called "Where I Come From," and at that moment, I realized poetry is not only a way to express a humorous or sorrowful idea or event, but rather it's more about self-expression.  I honestly never thought about using poetry to describe any aspect of myself, but I noticed that all of the poems I heard either had an underlying message about their life, or just explicitly told us what they wanted us to know about themselves.  And that's what I thought was really cool--the fact that I wouldn't necessarily think there's something heart-breaking or unfortunate beneath the surface of one's work, like my first impression of Junot Diaz's Drown.  Of course, anyone can hide their feelings or straight up tell their readers what they feel and why they feel that way, but I've become aware that these messages are hidden behind the words.  But, going back to the "Where I Come From" poems, I noticed so much more than I would have if I just asked someone to tell me where they come from.  I feel as though poetry is able to fill in the holes of an every-day conversation.
   Overall, I had an amazing experience listening to BHSEC students read their poems, and I am now considering to join next year's poetry workshop (if there will be one).

Final Draft of Analytical Essay

             In Junot Díaz’s memoir, Drown, the narrator finds himself looking back on his life in which the author shares his experience growing up in a poor country, the Dominican Republic, divulges details of his personal life marked by years of neglect and deprivation from his father, and tells about the Latino immigrant community in the United States.   For someone like myself, who was born and raised in the United States by well-educated and successful parents, someone who has never experienced any physical or emotional discomfort, someone who is genuinely loved and carried about, and whose only troubling responsibility is school work, Díaz’s book is a journey to an unknown world, the world of poverty, family betrayals, traumatized friendships, and hopeless love affairs, where characters deal with day-to-day violence and physical abuse as a norm rather than extraordinary circumstances that must be abolished.  However, despite the disconnect between the world I live in and the world Díaz describes, the author masterly crafts such a truthful reality in his stories that the reader is able to justify, connect, and share the feelings of his characters.  Díaz’s writing style enables him to convey his characters’ inner drama to the reader, making the reader anintegral part of the life the characters experience.

T.S. Eliot, an American poet, who is also well-known for his literary critic, claims that “the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems” in The Sacred Wood).  Likewise, Junot Díaz develops his stories through the use of dialogues, illustrations of specific scenery elements, and detailed depictions of events that uncover emotional stances of his characters, allowing the audience to connect to each character.  Rather than driving the reader’s reaction from a character’s judgment or action, Díaz depicts the way the individuals interact with each other and opens them up by connecting their mood or feelings with the audience.  Thus, conveying his characters’ true-life experience through communicating their inner stance, Díaz manages to build a close association between his characters and the reader, connecting them emotionally so as to enable the reader to feel what the personas feel.

Through dialogues, Díaz reveals a variety of facts that describe the origin, the cultural environment, as well as the social status of his characters.  In particular, Díaz uses Spanish words throughout his stories and dialogues, transporting the reader into the Latino community, whether events take place in the Dominican Republic or in New Jersey.  In Díaz’s first story, “Ysrael”, his characters keep talking about the colmado, a Spanish word for a grocery store, and the campo, which stands for the countryside in English.  The narrator denotes his family members only by their Spanish titles:  Papi and Mami, Abuelo referring to grandpa, Tía – to aunt, and Tío – to uncle.  Even when they are in the United States, Yunior, the narrator, and his family continue to speak Spanish to one another, highlighting their close ties to the Latino and their lack of interest in the American community, reinforcing their status quo.  While such a tight cultural bond does help the immigrants to retain their Dominican heritage, it may also emphasize them as people of a habit who are not willing to explore other life possibilities because they are comfortable with what they already have.  In “Aurora,” the story that takes place in New Jersey, many of the untranslated Spanish words are also accompanied by African-American slang words, such as “bro,” to allow the reader to visualize the ethnicity of the community that Díaz writes about.  Furthermore, to establish the social and cultural background of Díaz’s characters in their Dominican community, the narrator’s speech is filled with disparaging Spanish words, such as pato, which is a degrading term for a gay man and brutal English vocabulary, such as fuck, which is excessively misused throughout the dialogues.  The author also communicates the immigrant’s hassle with the English language by adding humorous expressions into the narrator’s speech.  His dialogues are packed with phrases such as “Jewel luv it” to mimic the English language phrase “You will love it” and slang combinations, such as “…even though your moms knows you ain’t sick you stuck your story until finally she said, Go ahead and stay, malcriado” (Díaz, 47 & 143). 

Díaz uses a number of details to convey the family’s disadvantageous socio-economic situation in their home country by making the reader visualize how the most basic needs for human survival are not met.  For instance, the author indicates that the family has a limited or no access to fresh water by letting us know that the family collects rainwater for cleaning purposes.  Díaz also helps the reader to relate the quality of the rainwater further by indicating that “there were always leaves and spiders in the water but Mami could draw a clean bucket better than anyone” (Díaz, 71).  Furthermore, Yunior and his brother, Rafa, cannot afford losing the only pencil each of them has for school.  If they were to lose it, “…[they] had to stay home from school until Mami could borrow another one…” (Díaz, 71).  Such a harsh detail makes the reader comprehend with the level of economic and social crisis of the entire community.  Apparently, there are no spare pencils available in school or friends’ families that can be easily accessed by the ones in need.  This single fact reveals how unpromising and diminishing the importance of someone’s life could be when the value of a pencil displaces kids from school to the streets.  

Through many related hints, Díaz makes the reader see a family tragedy, which evolves and spreads far beyond the wrecked romantic relationship between the wife and the husband, Yunior’s parents, traumatizing children and, subsequently, negatively affecting the latters’ future relationships.  Thus, “Fiesta, 1980” story reveals Yunior’s uneasy take on Papi’s love affair with a Puerto Rican woman.  Yunior is emotionally destroyed by his father’s betrayal, far more than he acknowledges.  The depth of his emotional struggle, though, is reflected by his physical condition.  He is unable to travel in his father’s car without throwing up, as he associates the car with Papi’s mistress whom he met “…right after Papi had gotten the van” (Diaz, 34).  Yunior’s carsickness seems to be a reaction to his father’s deed and his inability to accept his father’s unfaithfulness.   Yunior’s emotional stance is troubled further by the fact that he is a part of his father’s lie but still “…looked forward to [their] trips, even though at the end of each one [he]’d be sick.  These were the only times [he] and Papi did anything together” (Diaz, 35).  Yunior’s inner conflict, which he did not overgrow successfully in his adolescent years, later extends into a chain of hopeless and chaotic love affairs.

Díaz draws his characters through symbolic and distinguishing, yet factual characteristics that allow us to relate to them.  He uses various literary techniques, such as providing the characters’ language expressions and their physical and emotional conditions, to make the persona’s inner stance tangible and, thus, more accessible to the reader.  Connecting the audience to the characters using such methods allows the author to evoke emotions from the audience that are similar to those of the characters’.  Apparently, such a reader-character correlation dissolves the fictional origin of the characters, and blends them with the reader, allowing us to live through the story.

Revised Draft

In Junot Diaz’s memoir, “Drown,” the narrator finds himself looking back on his life in which the author shares his experience growing up in a poor Third World country, the Dominican Republic, divulges details of his personal life marked by years of neglect and deprivation at the hands of his father, or tells about the Latino immigrant community in the United States.   For someone like myself, who was born and raised in the United States by well-educated and successful parents, someone who has never experienced any physical or emotional discomfort, someone who is genuinely loved and carried about, and whose only troubling responsibility is school work, Diaz’s book is a journey to an unknown world, the world of poverty, family betrayals, traumatized friendships, and hopeless love affairs, where characters deal with day-to-day violence and physical abuse, as they are a norm rather than extraordinary circumstances that must be abolished.  However, despite the disconnection between the world I live in and the world Diaz describes, the author masterly crafts such an honest reality in his stories that the reader is able to justify, connect, and share the feelings of his characters.  Diaz’s writing style enables him to convey his characters’ inner drama to the reader, making the reader an integral part of the world his characters experience.

T.S. Eliot, an American poet, who is also well-known for his literary critic, claims that “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (qtd. in J. A. Cuddon's Dictionary of Literary Terms, page 647).  Likewise, Junot Diaz develops his stories through the use of dialogues, illustrations of scenery elements, and detailed depictions of events that uncover emotional stances of his characters, allowing his audience to connect to the character.  Rather than driving the reader’s reaction on a character’s mind or actions through depicting the way the individuals interact with each other, Diaz opens them up through connecting their moods or feelings with the reader’s.  Thus, conveying his characters’ true-life experience through communicating their inner state, Diaz manages to build a close association between his characters and the reader, relating them emotionally so as to enable the reader to feel what they feel.

Through dialogues, Diaz reveals a variety of facts that describe origin, cultural and social environments, as well as the professional standing of his characters.  In particular, Diaz uses Spanish words throughout his stories and dialogues, transporting the reader into the Latino community, whether events take place in the Dominican Republic or in New Jersey.  In Diaz’s first story, “Ysrael”, his characters keep talking about the colmado, a Spanish word for a grocery store, and the campo, which stands for the English countryside.  The narrator denotes his family members only by their Spanish titles:  Papi and Mami, Abuelo referring to grandpa, Tía – to aunt, and Tío – to uncle.  Even when they are in the United States, Yunior, the narrator, and his family continue to speak Spanish to one another, highlighting their close ties to the Latino, not American, community, and allowing us to feel this segregation.  While such a tight bond does help the immigrants to retain their Dominican heritage, it stops them from exploring the new country and new possibilities.  In “Aurora,” the story that takes place in New Jersey, many of the untranslated Spanish words are also accompanied by African-American slang words, such as “bro,” to allow the reader to visualize the ethnicity of the community that Diaz writes about.  Furthermore, to re-create the society's social and cultural settings in which Diaz’s characters live, the narrator’s speech is filled with disparaging Spanish words, such as pato, which is a degrading term for a gay man and brutal English vocabulary, such as fuck, which is excessively misused throughout the dialogues.  The author also communicates the immigrant’s hassle with the English language by adding humorous expressions into the narrator’s speech.  His dialogues are packed with phrases such as “Jewel luv it” to mimic the English language phrase “You will love it” and slang combinations, such as “…even though your moms knows you ain’t sick you stuck your story until finally she said, Go ahead and stay, malcriado” (Diaz, 47 & 143). 

Diaz uses details to convey the family’s disadvantageous socio-economic situation through making the reader visualize how the most basic human needs for survival are not met.  For instance, the author indicates that the family has a limited or no access to fresh water.  Diaz helps his reader to relate the quality of the avaliable water further by indicating that “there were always leaves and spiders in the water but Mami could draw a clean bucket better than anyone” (Diaz, 71).  Furthermore, Yunior and his brother, Rafa, cannot afford losing the only pencil each of them has for school.  If they were to lose it, “…[they] had to stay home from school until Mami could borrow another one…” (Diaz, 71).  Such a harsh detail makes the reader comprehend with the level of economic and social crisis of the entire community.  Apparently, there are no spare pencils available in school or friends’ families that can be easily accessed by the ones in need.  This single fact reveals how unpromising and diminishing the importance of someone’s future could be when the value of a pencil displaces kids from school to the streets.  

Through many related hints, Diaz makes the reader see a family tragedy, which evolves and spreads far beyond the wrecked romantic relationship between the wife and the husband, Yunior’s parents, traumatizing children and, subsequently, disturbing their future relationships.  Thus, “Fiesta, 1980” story reveals Yunior’s uneasy take on Papi’s love affair with a Puerto Rican woman.  Yunior is emotionally destroyed by his father’s betrayal – far more than he is willing to acknowledge.  The depth of his emotional struggle, though, is reflected by his physical condition.  He is unable to travel in his father’s car without throwing up, as he associates the car with Papi’s mistress whom he met “…right after Papi had gotten the van” (Diaz, 34).  Yunior’s carsickness seems to be a reaction to his father’s deed and his inability to accept his father’s unfaithfulness.   Yunior’s emotional state is further troubled by the fact that he became a part of his father’s lie but still “…looked forward to [their] trips, even though at the end of each one [he]’d be sick.  These were the only times [he] and Papi did anything together” (Diaz, 35).  Yunior’s inner conflict, which he did not overgrow successfully in his adolescent years, later extends into a chain of hopeless and chaotic relationships.

Diaz draws his characters through symbolic, distinguishing, but factual characteristics that allow the readers to associate themselves with.  He uses various literary techniques, such as the characters’ language expressions and their physical and emotional conditions, to make the characters’ inner state tangible and, thus, accessible to the reader.  Connecting the audience to the characters using such methods allow the author to evoke emotions directly from us that are similar to those of the characters’.  Apparently, such a reader-character correlation dissolves the fictional side of the character and replaces it with a real life experience, and hence, lets us live through the story.

Cut and Paste Collage

Rough Draft

In Junot Diaz’s memoir, “Drown,” the narrator finds himself looking back on his life whether the author shares his experience growing up in the Dominican Republic, reveals the hardships of being an immigrant in the United States, or describes the idea of the “American Dream.”   For someone like myself, who was born and raised in the United States by well-educated and successful parents, someone who never experienced any physical or emotional discomfort, someone who is genuinely loved and carried about, and whose only troubling responsibility is school work, Diaz’s book is a journey to an unknown world, the world of poverty, family betrayals, traumatized friendships, hopeless love affairs, where characters deal with day-to-day violence and physical abuse as they are a norm rather than extraordinary circumstances that must be abolished.  However, despite the disconnection between the world I live in and the world Diaz describes, the author builds such an honest reality that the reader is able to connect, accept, and share the feelings of his characters. Diaz’s writing style creates an intimate connection between his characters and the reader.

T.S. Eliot, an American poet, who is also well-known for his literary critic, claims that “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (qtd. in J. A. Cuddon's Dictionary of Literary Terms, page 647).  Likewise, Junot Diaz develops his story through the use of dialogs, showings of scenery, and the depiction of events that reveal moods and emotional states of his characters, placing the reader right into the story’s setting.  Diaz helps readers to visualize his characters through communicating their mood and feelings to us.  Thus, through conveying details of his characters’ true-life experience, Diaz manages to build an inner association of his characters and the reader, relating them emotionally and evoking the reader to feel what the characters feel.

Through dialogues, Diaz reveals a variety of facts that describe origin, cultural and social environments, as well as the professional standing of his characters.  In particular, Diaz uses Spanish words throughout his stories and dialogues, transporting the reader into the Latino community, whether events take place in the Dominican Republic or in New Jersey.  In Diaz’s first story, “Ysrael”, his characters keep talking about the colmado, a Spanish word for a grocery store, and the campo, which stands for the English countryside.  The narrator denotes his family members only by their Spanish titles:  Papi and Mami, Abuelo referring to grandpa, Tía – to aunt, and Tío – to uncle.  Even when they are in the United States, Yunior, the narrator, and his family continue to speak Spanish to one another, highlighting their close ties to the Latino, not American, community.  While such a tight bond does help the immigrants to retain their homeland heritage, it stops them from exploring the new nation and new possibilities.  In the “Aurora” story, that takes place in New Jersey, many of untranslated Spanish words are also accompanied with African-American slang words, such as “bro,” to allow the reader to visualize the ethnicity of the community that Diaz writes about.  Furthermore, to re-create the community’s social and cultural settings in which Diaz’s characters live, the narrator’s speech is filled with disparaging Spanish words, such as pato, which is a degrading term for a gay man and brutal English vocabulary, such as fuck, which is excessively misused throughout the dialogues.  The author also communicates the immigrant’s hassle with the English language by adding humorous expressions into the narrator’s speech.  His dialogues are packed with phrases such as “Jewel luv it” to mimic the English language phrase “You will love it” and slang combinations, such as “…even though your moms knows you ain’t sick you stuck your story until finally she said, Go ahead and stay, malcriado” (Diaz, 47 & 143). 

Diaz uses details to convey the family’s disadvantageous socio-economic situation through making the reader visualize how the most basic human needs for survival are not met.  For instance, the author indicates that the family has a limited or no access to clean fresh water.  Diaz helps his reader to relate the quality of such water further by indicating that “there were always leaves and spiders in the water but Mami could draw a clean bucket better than anyone” (Diaz, 71).  Furthermore, Yunior and his brother, Rafa, cannot afford losing the only pencil each of them has for school.  If they were to lose it, “…[they] had to stay home from school until Mami could borrow another one…” (Diaz, 71).  Such a harsh detail makes the reader comprehend with the level of economic and social crisis of the entire community.  Apparently, there are no spare pencils available in school or friends’ families that can be easily accessed by the ones in need.  This one fact reveals how unpromising and diminishing the importance of someone’s future life could be when the value of a pencil displaces kids from school to the streets.  

Through many related nuances, Diaz makes the reader see a family tragedy, which evolves and spreads far beyond romantic relationships between the wife and the husband, Yunior’s parents, traumatizing children and affecting their future personalities.  Thus, “Fiesta, 1980” story reveals Yunior’s uneasy take on Papi’s love affair with a Puerto Rican woman.  Yunior is emotionally troubled by his father’s betrayal – far more than even he can acknowledge.  As the result, he is unable to travel in his father’s car without throwing up, as the car is associated with Papi’s mistress whom he met “…right after Papi had gotten the van” (Diaz, 34).  Yunior’s carsickness is the reaction to his father’s deed and his inability to accept his father’s unfaithfulness.   Yunior’s emotional state is troubled further by the fact that he got involved in his father’s lie but still “…looked forward to [their] trips, even though at the end of each one [he]’d be sick.  These were the only times [he] and Papi did anything together” (Diaz, 35).  Ultimately, one can argue that Yunior’s experience with his father’s betrayals in his adolescent years have led to a chain of hopeless relationships for himself.

The development of Diaz’s characters is supported by detailed representations of their language and physical and emotional conditions.  The characters’ inner conflicts, their emotional transformations, and reactions are communicated to the reader in the way that it lets the reader become an integral part of the characters’ life experience.  Such a correlation allows the reader to understand and share feelings of Diaz’s characters.

My Draft Reflection

1: I feel like I have a lot of good ideas that focus around my main idea of the different kinds of objective correlatives that Diaz uses throughout Drown.

2: I think I need to work on organizing my thoughts to make them flow better. I also need to explain more and use my experiences and emotions that have been evoked from Diaz's objective correlatives. 

3: My draft is like a bowl of salad, all mixed together and somewhat difficult to sort because everything just sticks together with the dressing.

Workshop Letters to Peers

About Demitrius's draft:

1: Your center of gravity seems to be that dialogue is a very important narrating style that Diaz uses in Drown.  For this argument, you say that the dialogue has so much value in the novel, specifically because it "adds to the story" and allows you to relate to the main character.  You seem to be trying to articulate the idea that Diaz's use of dialogue essentially allows you to feel the character's experience.  I think this is one of your main pieces of evidence.  You appear to be amazed at how large of a role dialogue really plays in the development of the characters in the story, as well as how we view these characters.
2: I believe that you should cite several pieces of dialogue that Diaz uses in Drown.  Not only will it allow the reader (me) to directly see what you're talking about, but it will also make me believe you more.  You have several strong ideas, but you refer to some as "...this is..." and "things."  Elaborate on them, and let the reader clearly understand what you are pointing to.  What really caught my eye was when you mentioned "It's like the dialogue is supposed to be hidden, but when found reveals the true drive behind the story."  You seem to skip over it a bit, but that's probably because this was your raw draft.  I am also really interested in when you say that the text is so powerful due to the fact that many can find a connection within it.  I want to know how (and if you do) connect with the text!

About Hanif's draft:

1: Your center of gravity seems to be that Diaz is able to use objective correlatives in a way that the object represents the idea quite well.  I guess this wonders you because he seems to simply take a gingko tree and correlate it to Yunior's feelings of loneliness and his repetitive life.  You are also making a mini-argument that Yunior uses others, such as Rafa, to express his emotions towards his dad.  I think that you can also use Yunior's mom and the way the two (mom and dad) are described to sort of justify the idea that the dad will never come back a better man.  If you were to only focus on this objective correlative, then I believe a question you can focus on is why Rafa and Yunior fantasize about their dad in this way, knowing that he won't come back.  But, of course, you can use Yunior's loneliness and boredom with the gingko trees as evidence that maybe Yunior wants something exciting and eventful to happen, such as him having a father who cares!
2: You've outlined a pretty solid basis for your essay, but I certainly want to know more about the emotions that relate to you.  After all, I think objective correlatives let us further know more about a character by allowing us to connect to them.  You should definitely explain yourself more.  I don't know if you've realized or did it on purpose, but your last paragraph seems to have a warrant and acknowledgment, which is really good because you can respond to the acknowledgment and then respond back with your claim that the object Diaz uses and the emotion they represent are like puzzle pieces, they fit together perfectly.

Raw Draft

Diaz appears to use dialogue and interaction as an example of an objective correlative, leaving us to develop the characters on our own.  He uses Spanish slang, including swears and improper grammar, throughout several of his stories.  We are left to assume that these characters are uneducated and laid-back. *INCLUDE EXAMPLES OF POOR GRAMMAR AND SLANG TERMS.*  Almost all of Diaz’s stories are narrated from the first person point of view.  He simply hands us the actions of his family and friends.  Diaz also seems to choose a different setting or event for the characters in each one of his stories, but while he changes the “big” picture for us, our emotions don’t change.  For instance, the way in which his dad talks to him is the same in all of his short stories.  *INCLUDE WHAT HIS DAD TELLS HIM.*  

Using detailed descriptions of events, Diaz is able to let us further open up the character’s personality.  Diaz’s last story, Negocios, begins with Yunior’s dad having another affair with a new woman.  At first, he leaves the family to be with this other woman and to give Yunior’s mom some time to think about it, but then comes back thinking only about the money he may be losing from his father-in-law.  Again, he leaves to start a new life in the United States, yet only to find a new woman to spend his time with.  (163-165) He begins to live under her roof, and soon enough, has a son with her.  He names his son Yunior, but finds himself thinking about the Yunior he left in the Dominican Republic.  Diaz first leaves us with the impression that the dad doesn’t care much about his family, yet still holds some compassion for the son he left.  

Diaz also portrays the contrasting characters of the dad and the mom.  The dad is generally shown as more dominating when he walks around or is talked about.  For example, while “Papi’s voice was loud and argumentative… you had to put cups to your ears to hear…[Mami’s]” (page 33).  The dad always seems to need direct attention from many.  It was also expressed that the mom has turned into a “major-league wuss” being around Papi for most of her life (page 33).  The mother is most definitely described as an innocent and small woman, especially when Yunior talks about how she looks on special occasions. *NEED TO FIND WHERE HE SAYS THIS.*  In contrast, the father is revealed as aggressive, abusive, and most often is the leader of the family.

Lastly, Diaz depicts scenery details that make us visualize and emotionally feel the struggles in their society.  Yunior creates an image of himself having to catch worms with his brother Rafa for dinner (page 71).  Apparently, the water was also very filthy and filled with leaves and spiders.  The fact that his mother is able to pick out the best bucket of water fills him with pride, and also shows how unsanitary their living necessities were.  Besides the idea that the family has been living in horrible conditions, the mother appears to only feel safe when the windows are closed in their house (page 96).  She specifically seems to be worried about a robber making phone calls.  With this in mind, it looks to be that the only valuable thing they own in their house is their telephone.  As poor and low class as this family is, the mom dominates the dad’s role in the family and she begins to work “…ten-, twelve-hour shifts…” that still pay only enough money to rent their home and pay the bills (page 71).  The kids also cannot afford to even lose a pencil because if they did then they would have to stay home from school until they were able to get a new one.  Yunior uses the word “borrow” rather than buy when he refers to getting a new pencil which certainly shows that all the money the family has is limited to what they can use it for (page 71).  In fact, when the mom returns from her five week “vacation,” it is evident that she was working so hard for the family because she returned with “…her hands…heavy with calluses” (page 84).

Finding Center of Gravity