Brigid Bazlen: A Short Story

Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated with his family to New Jersey, where a collection of his short stories are based from. Out of that collection is a short story “Fiesta, 1980”, which was featured in The Best American Short Stories, 1997. This story is told from the perspective of an adolescent boy, who lives in the Bronx of northern New Jersey with his family. He is having trouble understanding why things are the way they are in his family. Diaz shows Yunior’s character through his cultures, his interaction with his family, and his bitterness toward his father.

“It’s not everyday we get company around here,” I reminded myself, “we haven’t shown our chateau in ages.” As we walked down the elegant staircase, each step creaked one by one. My hand-held lamp with the bright, burning fire was in clutch as we walked around the dusty furniture until we saw some of my men. They were silent, but you could see the fear in their eyes - almost like the fear in Rainsford’s. One had the guts to come up, and offer another light looking for a way to impress me with his concern, but I quickly declined.

Booker struggled to suppress a laugh as he pretended to ponder the significance of Tom’s reaction. “Well, you let Penhall hug you all the time,” he replied slowly, his brow furrowing in contemplation, and when Tom did not answer, he waggled his eyebrows suggestively as his mouth widened into a huge, teasing grin. “Is there something going on between the two of you that I should know about?”

From across the room, I felt his eyes upon me. Louis had us seated at a table near a window overlooking the slow flowing muddy river. Myles Laveau sat across the room, his dinner companion’s back was toward the room and to me- I was seething with a need to view her face. Why was I feeling this way, he was not mine… I had no right to be angry. I had Louis to my left and Boudreaux to my right, but wanted what was out of reach- at least for the moment. I knew I could have him again; Myles Laveau affected me the same way the flame-haired woman had, but unlike her, he made himself available. The simplest touch from him sent quivers through my pleasure place; just the touch of his eyes upon me had me quivering with desire for him, and

With his cheeks burning red, Booker nervously wiped the sweat from his palms on his denim-clad legs. “I dunno, he’s beautiful, like strikingly beautiful. Since Doug’s death, there’s a glimmer of vulnerability that lies just below the surface that never used to be there. But he’s also incredibly stubborn and strong-minded, like me and I guess that’s why we fight so much. I s’pose you could say he’s kinda complicated, but that’s what makes him so appealing. He’s unpredictable, which can be frustrating, but it also makes life interesting, you know?”

“Salvador, late or early, sooner or later arrives with the string of younger brother’s ready” Poverty stricken Salvador is plagued daily with the responsibility of his brother’s, seen as an invisible nobody at school, and aches with not having a break from this endless cycle, but none of it breaks Salvador’s spirit. He is an engine that keeps running, despite being mistreated, uncared for, and beaten. It’s amazing that Salvador, with his “geography of scars,” and “history of hurt,” hasn’t lost hope. He hasn’t lost hope because he thinks not of how difficult his situation is at the moment, but of the better future soon to come. A future where Salvador’s mama isn’t so busy, a future where they won’t eat corn flakes from a tin cup, a future where his crayons aren’t “little fingers of red, green, yellow, blue” or “nubs of black sticks that tumble,” He remains going everyday with his hopes that keep him going locked inside deep somewhere as he fulfills his responsibilities day to day. Salvador is also kept going by the love he gets from his brothers. Salvador’s name literally means ‘Savior’ and to his little brothers, he is their savior. He provides them with everything his mother can’t give them and with the love they give back to Salvador, he finds strength and keeps pushing forward. “Helps his mama with the business of the baby” Mature Salvador is. Salvador did learn to adapt to his life and became quite mature

Falling forward, Tom pressed his lips against Booker’s open mouth and kissed him passionately. Removing his finger, Booker wrapped his arms around Tom’s narrow body and pulling him close, they thrust their bodies together as they continued to shudder out their release. Seconds passed, and when they were both finally spent, Tom slowed the kiss and sitting up, he trailed a finger over the seminal fluid covering Booker’s chest. “Wow,” he grinned.

“Tom,” Booker sighed and struggling to his feet, he moved over to the couch and sat down. “I don’t want to talk about him, I want to know if you’re

A humorless grin strained at Booker's lips, but his expression remained frosty. “You... were... what?” he asked, biting down on each word as though he were ripping the sentence apart with his bare teeth. “Consoling me? Making fun of me? Or are you trying to tell me in some clumsy way that you want me to bend you over the back of the couch and fuck you like a bitch? Is that it? Huh?”

Continuing in the theme of conformity; if the boys are united by their heteronomy, Cuellar’s castration, in contrast, is the source of his ostracism. His unfortunate accident is a wound that ‘time opens instead of closes’, and as the story progresses, Vargas Llosa juxtaposes the boys socially inclusive youthful pastimes of football and studying mentioned earlier in the novel with his comparatively solitary penchant for the ocean and surfing “a puro pecho o con colchón” (94) in chapter five. In this passage, his distance from the others is symbolised by the isolation of the sea; the narrator says the water “se lo tragó” (95) and later, the boys state that “se perdió” (96). Clearly, Cuellar’s failure to partake in the testosterone fuelled rituals of sexual maturity in the city has seen him shunned from the rest of the boys and resigned to hanging out with “rosquetes, cafichos y pichicateros” (96) instead – the modern, metropolitan outcasts. Evidently, Cuellar is incapacitated by this highly heteronormative lifestyle, as the inherent masculinity of the city is a fixed identity that will perpetually exclude him, or anyone else who cannot fulfil Peruvian societies idea of gender appropriate behaviour.

One thing all human beings have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and familial expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

One thing all human beings, have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and family expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

My boy grew into a man, my girl long and slender like the blossoming mimosa at the end of the drive. Pedrito took on a certain gravity, became an important man around here. And I, Patria Mercedes? Like every woman of her house, I disappeared into what I loved, coming up now and then for air. I mean, an overnight trip by myself to a girlfriend’s, a special set to my hair, and maybe a yellow dress.

The narrator’s feelings of inferiority and powerlessness parallels the female figure she sees trapped behind the pattern in the wall-paper adorning her room. She gradually withdraws from both John and reality by locking herself in the room and ultimately merging with the figure. Through the changing image of the pattern from a “fait figure” (Gilman 46) to a “woman stooping” (Gilman 46) behind the paper and “shaking the bars” (Gilman 46) as if she wanted “to get out” (Gilman 46), we can see her becoming one with the figure: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”(51) Her collapse into madness as reflected in her behavior with the “bedstead [that] is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 51) and her “creeping all around” (Gilman 50) is a direct result of her passive submissiveness to John’s control of her life.

It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.