Junot Diaz and Female Stereotypes

Junot Diaz shows a form of masculinity that is often excessively masculine. His male characters are prone to violence and sexual escapades in an attempt to obtain or further solidify their state of manhood. While there is a one sided view of masculinity in Diaz’s stories, his female characters tend to fall in to two main groups. His women are either mothers who are the only parent figure or simple whores, sometimes nameless altogether. These are both common stereotypes for women as is the fatherless and violent image for men of color, particularly Latinos.  Diaz seems to thrive on stereotypes for both genders which is usually detrimental in literature. However, his picture of women as either mother or whore is not necessarily a negative depiction of the women in his stories. 

            In Diaz’s story, “Ysrael”, Rafa and Yunior’s mother has shipped them out to the country for the summer because she is a single parent and works long hours. She thinks she is doing a good thing by sending her sons for a summer with their uncle. She is the typical working mother who tries to do what is best for her children but is too tired to do it by herself.

Later in the story, Rafa talks about all the girls he has had sexual encounters with while staying at their uncles. These girls are coming into their own sexuality which is the same thing as what Rafa is doing, but women in literature who are exploring their sexuality outside of a relationship are often pegged as whores. Many readers write these girls off as Diaz forcing women into the whore image, but he is showing the same thing through Rafa. It is a double standard and it is the readers job to use the text to move beyond it.

 

            In Diaz’s story, “No Face”, the whore image is not present but the mother image is in the background. Ysrael’s mother makes him put on the mask in the end to protect him from his father picking at him. She takes care of his little brother even while Ysrael is left alone. She is the mother figure and tries to care for her children. She is a more complex mother figure though because by trying to protect her son she accidently isolates him further.

 

            In Diaz’s story, “Negocios”, the whore image is present in the beginning of the story when Ramon is having an affair with an unnamed temptress.  The next woman in the story is Mami. She is the ultimate mother image. She loves her children and hates their father for the affair. She continues to have complex emotions about her marriage even after Ramon leaves for America. She is more complex than the simple mother/whore image that Diaz is so often accused of perpetuating in literature.

Many people claim that Diaz does not respect women or see their full complexity. I strongly disagree. It would be easy to say that Diaz only shows two versions of women in his stories. However, while the recurring image of mothers and whores is there, his characters are all more complex than a stereotype would normally allow.

The Burden Lessens

Homosexuality and mental illness are both often misunderstood in their own unique ways. Many people are ostracized or struggle to come to terms with themselves. It can be hard to live happily under such circumstances. However, as demonstrated in “Fun Home” and the film “Tarnation”, it does get easier to cope with these tough topics of homosexuality and mental illness with each passing generation.

In “Fun Home”, Allison’s father had to live a life that was a fabricated identity of heterosexuality.  He was gay in a time when that was not an acceptable lifestyle. He felt isolated and did not embrace his sexuality as a positive. He spent most of his life hiding who he really was and what he wanted. In contrast, Allison was able to find her sexuality without as much shame. She joined gay clubs in college and had a girlfriend. She told her parents and friends she was gay. This is all because the social climate had changed drastically from when her father was her age and struggling with his sexuality.  While homosexuality is far from being totally accepted, it is less of a taboo than ever before in history.

 

Likewise, in the film “Tarnation”, the newer generation has it easier than their parents’ generation in regards to mental illness. Jonathan’s mother, Renee, was treated for mental illness in a period of history that was ill equipped, due to a lack of medical knowledge, to effectively treat mental illness.  Renee was forced to have shock therapy treatments which sent electricy through her brain. This series of treatments is no longer in use today because doctors know that it does not help the patient and actually does more harm than good, but in Renee’s time it was widely used partly because so little information existed on how to treat chemical imbalances in the brain. She suffered lifelong repercussions that she never recovered from such as a loss of her original personality by age twenty-five and mental incapacity that rendered her childlike and incapable of leading a productive, normal life. Jonathan, on the other hand, was able to deal with his mental illness in a healthier way. He had a very difficult childhood and did drugs that contributed to his unstable mental health. He suffered from depersonalization which was a mental illness that made him feel disconnected and as if he were living in a dreamlike state or a movie. Jonathan had an easier time dealing with his mental illness than his mother did. He did not have to have shock therapy because it was no longer used to treat mental illness. He was able to move to New York City and have an apartment of his own which lends to the fact that he was, most likely, a functioning member of society in ways his mother was never stable to achieve. He also managed to use his mental illness to express himself artistically. His mental illness made him feel like he was in a film or watching himself in a film. He used that to his advantage in that he starting actually making films.

 

 

For every generation, the struggles and scrutiny seem to get easier to bear. These two stories prove that fact beautifully. With any luck, the generations to follow will be even less misunderstood and mistreated.

The Struggle for Native Americans

Throughout Sheman Alexie’s stories, there are many references to the crimes committed against Native Americans by white people in the past. He also alludes to the fact that Native Americans harm each other even more than white people may harm them in the present. However, the real root of the problem for Native Americans is the struggle to live between the two worlds. The characters in the stories, “Every Little Hurricane” and “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” show the struggle to not be influenced by the white man’s culture, but still showcase the desire to belong to something more mainstream than reservation life.

 

 

 

In “Every Little Hurricane”, the main way in which white culture is emulated is through the drinking of alcohol which encourages the violence in the story. It is not news to anyone that white men introduced alcohol consumption to Native Americans and they have struggled with alcoholism ever since. This is a prime example of how the characters in the story try to fit into a white man’s world, but it has devastating consequences. The drunken stupors cause the two brothers to fight each other and the parents of Victor to pass out ignoring their son. For Victor, and the reader, this is a symbol of how Native Americans are  either destroying each other or self-destructing. The way Alexie uses weather elements throughout the key passages about these moments of emotional destruction is tied to the connection that Native Americans once had with nature. The hurricane comes that night unnoticed and while the hurricane is not real and is merely a metaphor for the destruction of these lives caused by living in a cultural state of tug of war, it is important that they do not see it coming because they are no longer in tune with nature.

 

 

 

In the other story mentioned, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”, the fact that Thomas Builds-the-Fire is a storyteller is used to further highlight the struggle for Victor to live in the traditons of his heritage or move forward as a more modernized man. Story telling is a central part of the rich heritage of Native Americans. Thomas Builds-the-Fire always tells stories that have a meaning or moral behind them and because no one wants to cling to that tradition because they are too busy chasing white modernity, people on the reservation ignore him. Victor is annoyed by this quality and it has even invoked violence from him in the past towards Thomas. The act of storytelling is a connection to the past and the Native American heritage, and Victor  admits that not only does he need help from  Thomas, but that he also has a “sudden need for tradition”. There is a defintire struggle there for Victor as he tries to reconcile the past he shares with this person who seems more deeply rooted in the Native American ways whereas Victor seems much more concerned with getting money and the truck from his dead father. This display of greed or valuing material objects which is very much associated with white man’s culture over heritage and family is just another example of the struggle highlighted in these two stories as Native Americans try to reconcile where they belong with where they are in American culture.

 

 

 

The Importance of Art

 

In Leroi Jones’s play The Dutchman, there is a statement being made about black art. The idea proposed by Clay is that if blacks could kill whites than they would not need to create black art. Black art, especially during the Harlem Renaissance, was perhaps an outlet for suppressed anger towards whites as suggested by Jones, but it was also the attempt to build a cultural identity for blacks within a complicated world.

 

 

Artists were concerned with representing the truth through art while enforcing a positive depiction of blacks to lift blacks up in society. The art being created was meant to send a message to the black community. The art was not intended for white audiences. Black art was about breaking out of white society because within that society blacks were boxed in by stereotypes put in place by whites. Art has been such an influential means to social identity for blacks when this is not the case for most other people. It is as if when a white person creates art then it is just art, but when a black person creates art it has a deeper rooted subtext and carries more cultural weight.  The problem is that blacks are constantly being defined either by whites or themselves and are never allowed to simply be; therefor everything about them can be considered a stereotype because they as a group have been, and still are, separated by an imaginary “race” classifier which exists in a constant state of scrutiny.

 

 

It is also interesting that during the Harlem Renaissance, which was the height of black art, many blacks were trying to assimilate into the American ideals and institutions through art yet many went to France for freedom from discrimination and barriers based on skin color. It is intriguing because blacks were trying to become an accepted part of a whole they knew despised them. Much like stereotypes, even this idea of assimilation was complicated because many black artists were searching for a sense of heritage through art by bringing Africa to America. Blacks were trying to build up pride in Africa but many black Americans had no emotional connection to Africa and could not see themselves in African cultures since they were Americanized from birth.  People are not emotionally bonded with countries or land that their ancestors hailed from unless that place is still a part of everyday life. For instance, I may be Irish but there is no emotional connection to Ireland since I have never been there. For a person to feel a bond with land there has to be a relationship with it whether through living there, visiting, or older family members who pass down the traditions of that place to the younger generation. Most blacks in America did not have any contact with Africa and that was why the loyalty to Africa was weak, but many artists tried to bring that heritage out through art.

 

 

Blacks have fought for inclusion in society by not being forced into a blacks only world yet wish to have forms of separation from the equality they struggled for, but maybe this isolation is not a conflict or contradiction but rather a form of black power in that blacks will only be isolated by choice and not by force. Black art would still need to exist in order for this to happen and unlike what Leroi Jones suggests in his play, violence would never make blacks stop making art because it is about more than anger or reparation. It is about identity and a sense of community.

 

 

The Piano Lesson

            August Wilson’s play, The Piano Lesson, uses the element of the supernatural throughout as a way to connect the characters to their past, especially their ancestors. It is never questioned that the ghost of Sutter is a real presence felt by all in the play. It is also wholly believable that the ancestors of the family come back when Berniece plays the piano. Another ghostly entity which features prominently in The Piano Lesson is The Ghost of Yellow Dog. This ghost is believed to have pushed several white landowners down their own wells to their deaths. While this works well in the play, the argument can be made that Sutter was not killed by the Ghost of Yellow Dog but rather by Boy Willie. There are several evidentiary clues that support this claim.

            The first clue is that Boy Willie wanted Sutter’s land which gave him ample motive to push Sutter down the well. With Sutter out of the picture, Boy Willie can claim the land his family served as slaves.

           The next clue after motive for the crime is that Boy Willie is a naturally violent person who has already committed crimes in the past. He spent time in prison and thinks it is acceptable behavior to steal. Boy Willie admits that when his dog died and he was upset, he killed a cat for revenge. It is obviously in Boy Willie’s nature to kill and he even quotes the Bible’s well known credo of “an eye for an eye”. He wants revenge against Sutter for what his ancestors did in the past.

            Another fact that eludes to Boy Willie having murdered Sutter is that the ghost of Sutter comes after Boy Willie. When the ghost of Sutter shows up, he asks for Boy Willie and in the end the two have a scuffle. If Sutter had been killed by the Ghost of Yellow Dog then Sutter would not search for Boy Willie. It is extremely relevant to this argument the fact that Sutter seems to have no desire in communicating with the other members of the family. He only wants Boy Willie.  It is also important to note that none of the other people killed by the Ghost of Yellow Dog are haunting the family in the play which points to the fact that there is no connection between them and Boy Willie whereas Sutter searches for Boy Willie.

            Some may argue that Boy Willie could not have pushed Sutter down the well because Boy Willie said he could not have pushed the 300 pound man down a well, but it is important to keep in mind that Lymon may have helped because he is also of questionable moral character. Whether Lymon helped commit the crime or whether Boy Willie used her anger and adrenaline to do the deed, it is still within the believability of the story that Boy Willie killed Sutter due to his motives, tendency towards violence, and what he stands to gain from Sutter’s death.