Drown

Pages: 166
Published: 1997
Language: English

This collection of stories moves from the barrios of the Dominican Republic to the struggling urban communities of New Jersey. Characters navigate difficult realities, such as two brothers hunting a disfigured boy, a tormented individual reflecting on their own appearance, and a family gathering overshadowed by a father's infidelities. Another story follows a young man who finds intense longing in the overheard life of his neighbor.

Prose complexity: 7/10

Gritty Melancholic Emotional Complex

Coming of Age Family Saga Multiple POVs

Literary Fiction

Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz (born December 31, 1968) is a Dominican American writer, creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a former fiction editor at Boston Review. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience. He received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and received a MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant" in 2012.