Context

Junot Diaz prefaces Drown with a poem by Gustavo Pérez Firmat:

The fact that I

am writing to you

in English

already falsifies what I

wanted to tell you.

My subject:

how to explain to you that I

don't belong to English

though I belong nowhere else.

The poem provides important context for the premise of the story of the character Yunior, whose actions often seem perplexing.  Diaz portrays him as a child and young adult with, seemingly, an external locus of control, and in many ways, he is somewhat helpless to change his circumstances--his upholstery-induced carsickness, abusive absentee father, chronically grief-stricken mother, and his unsympathetic older brother, all on top of debilitating poverty.  He does not seem to feel as though he belongs elsewhere, in more comfortable circumstances, just as the poet explains that he belongs neither to English nor elsewhere, but he also seems not to imagine that other possibilities are open to him.  His only means of controlling his fate seem to be shoplifting and selling drugs, neither of which can ultimately get him very far in life.

As to the effect of the language of the story, which is written in English but with many Spanish words when they seem to fit his meaning better, I often found myself feeling somewhat isolated as a reader with very limited knowledge of the Spanish language, which was perhaps Diaz's intent--to make the reader feel an isolation that mirror's Yunior's, which he seems unwilling to lament verbally throughout the story.  It is also interesting to note that while I have this very limited knowledge of the Spanish language, the context makes it possible to follow along in spite of the disparity, which lends credence to the idea that "Context is everything," as discussed at the beginning of the semester and indeed the syllabus.  It is important to consider context not only in relation to culture but even on the individual sentence level.