29 pages • 58 minutes read
Junot DíazHow to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Government Cheese
The cheese is a symbol of a certain amount of poverty within the story, specifically the economic disadvantage of the protagonist and his family. It is a food that is commonly provided by social services to beneficiaries of welfare, food stamps, or other government-run benefit programs for the underprivileged. The cheese is mentioned twice in the narrative, and both times the narrator hides it in preparation for his date’s arrival at his home. The narrator also makes a note to take the cheese out of his hiding place after the date is over. This shows that there is a performative aspect to his courtship ritual beyond a superficial appearance, as well as an apprehensive attitude toward disclosing his true class and race to others.
Spanish Language
Diaz employs an effective use of cross-cultural language that is emblematic of a dissonance between the narrator and parts of his world. Terms such as tia, campo, and malcriado appear throughout the dialogue in the text. Much of the narrative is in English, so the juxtaposition between moments of Spanish alongside English are not only distinctive but also important to characterize the narrator’s identity. For example, when the narrator adjusts his home to get rid of any markers of his immigrant status, he blends both languages: “Take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the campo” (Paragraph 2). Here, the Spanish language is present during a moment when the narrator is acutely aware of his identity as an immigrant and a potential Other.
Appearance and the Other
One of the prevailing motifs of the story is the link between appearance and being an “Other.” This motif helps develop the theme of Performativity and Social Interactions. The protagonist tries to maintain the appearance of someone who fits into the situations in which he finds himself.
Another facet of this motif is the way that Others in the narrative are discussed. There are few fully realized visual descriptions of the characters throughout the story. While the women that the narrator dates are mostly distinguished in terms of physical attributes or attitude, the men are just as abstract in terms of their descriptions. They are described in terms of demeanor or voice, like Howie or stern fathers of some of the girls that the narrator attempts to date.
The narrator’s appearance gets a fuller description. When the narrator tries to hide his afro, the description is racially coded: “Run a hand though your hair like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa” (Paragraph 7). This quote frames many of the actions he takes as neutral in terms of his own background but rich in terms of his adherence to a dominant culture. Overall, the narrator deemphasizes his own physical traits, a choice Diaz makes to present the narrator’s inner conflict over identity.
Related Titles
By Junot Díaz
