Fiesta Summary free essay sample

Before Junot Diaz received acclaim for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, he was better known in fiction circles for his short stories about immigrants and the American dream. In Fiesta, 1980, Diaz writes about the struggles of an immigrant family as they wake up from a nightmare in Santo Domingo only to find themselves in another nightmare, except this time its in America. Diazs characters assimilate to an American way of life with changes in appearance and language. A young Yunior and is family alternate between speaking in English and Spanish, sometimes using both at the same time. The children even begin using new American curse words (Chickenshit). They learn new cultural rules, throw away past behavior (Back in Santo Domingo, hed be getting laid by now), and accept change in order to survive. No one in Diazs world is one-dimensional. Yuniors father, Pap, is probably the most complex character in the story. We will write a custom essay sample on Fiesta Summary or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Hes the patriarch of his family; hes often cold and itter towards them (My Father the Torturer) and breaks them apart with his affair with another woman. But Diaz places in subtle implications that make us think theres more to him. Diaz gives Papi his moments. When he cleans up his sons vomit for the first time†that was a big deal because he never cleaned anything himself. Yunior even notes that in the darkness, he could see his father putting his hand on his mothers knee†a gesture of love perhaps? We also find out in a later story that it ook him years to send money for his family to Join him in the States, but this story shows that he eventually did and we have to wonder why he did that if for no other reason than love. By mentioning brief and kind flashes of Papi, Diaz shows us fragments of a man who was perhaps at one point was a better person. The narration is also interesting if you compare this story with Diazs The Sun, the Moon, the Stars. In Fiesta, 1980, we get the voice of a young and innocent-like Yunior, who has to deal with his own fathers adultery and how it affects his mother. Whereas in the former story, we see an older Yunior Justifying his own infidelity. Its the same person but in a different voice each time. Perhaps its Diazs way of saying that Just as a new country can change people and that change isnt always for the better. There are two things IVe always loved about Junot Diazs writing: the simplicity of his words and his ability to make us feel like we are these characters or weve been them at one point. We have parents who we love and hate, sometimes one more than the other. Yuniors feelings towards his father change from l wanted him to love me to l wanted to kill him. We have parents who regret the way their lives turned out. This was the woman my father met a year later the woman Mami thought shed always be. And almost everyone has in some sense immigrated, if not to a new country, then to a new city, new state, etc. The process of moving and change is hard and challenging. Its sometimes a nightmare and Diaz depicts this well. Fiesta Summary By badness999