Alma
The
chapter Alma is interesting because
the reader is exposed to a very different view of Yunior’s infidelity than what
our class has come to have, especially in terms of what it means to be a
Dominican man. In the previous story Nilda, Yunior is still a very quiet
person when it comes to his relationships with women, a characteristic that is
quite un-Dominican. He claims to love Nilda,
but never tells her how he feels, and he sits quietly even while he expects
Rafa to mistreat her. While this
reluctance to engage with women isn’t as explicit in the following chapter, the
reader can gleam that Yunior is still inexperienced when it comes to the
opposite sex. At the beginning of Alma,
Yunior claims that if it wasn’t for girls like her he never would have lost his
virginity (47). While this doesn’t
explicitly state that Alma was the girl who did it, the reader can assume that
this relationship was towards the beginning of Yunior’s sex life. There are also other examples within the
chapter that show Yunior’s lack of experience when it comes to women. When asked on their first date if he would
rather come on Alma’s tits or her face Yunior responds with, “umm, neither”
(48-49), and when he is caught cheating he foolishly tries to deny it (50). But Yunior’s inexperience doesn’t stop him from
cheating, although it does get him caught in one of the most idiotic ways
possible. Yunior’s infidelity is
something that isn’t uncommon among the average Dominican man from Diaz’s
books, and is something most readers would consider to make him more Dominican. However, Alma views the situation
differently. Earlier in the chapter Alma
brags to her friends that Yunior is a “real Dominican” (48), and it is only
after she finds him cheating that she accuses him of being a “fake-ass
Dominican” (50). This difference between
the reader’s and Alma’s opinion could illuminate the ways in which Dominicans view
their nationality. Being Dominican
herself, Alma should understand how Dominican men behave. Do we, as readers on the outside have an
untrue bias about what it means to be a Dominican man, or is Alma’s perception skewed
because of youthful inexperience or some other factor? How do Alma’s views
compare with the other women in Diaz’s books?
I think that this idea of defining exactly what is or is not Dominican according to Diaz's novels is quite difficult to nail down, and not just because as readers, we view things from a different perspective; the manifestation of this sentiment is almost contradictory when you consider how other characters views on promiscuity and its relation to being Dominican. For instance, as you mention, Alma's blunt comment about Yunior being a "fake-ass Dominican" after discovering his cheating ways suggests that cheating somehow makes Yunior less of a Dominican if we view being Dominican as a spectrum in this case (50). However, when Yunior is caught cheating on Magda, her friends express the exact opposite sentiment: "All of Magda's friends say I cheated because I was Dominican, that all us Dominican men are dogs and can't be trusted" (18-19). Magda's friends assert that infidelity is typical of Dominican men, that it is a part of their very nature. Yunior himself disagrees with this, and suggests that there are other reasons for why he cheats on his girlfriends. I tend to agree with Magda's friends based on what we have seen in many of the male characters of Diaz's books; to answer your question, I think Alma's perception is skewed because she is upset, and because there is much evidence throughout all three of the novels to dispute her claim. Perhaps though, her words ring true in the sense that a man cheating on his girl somehow makes him less of a man.
ReplyDeleteI saw this differentiation between what it means to be a Dominican man as well. However, instead of viewing it as a discrepancy between the audience and Alma, I initially saw it as a difference between the female and male perspectives of what it means to be a Dominican man. The stereotypical explanation for this differentiation would be to assume that all Dominican men think that being “a real Dominican” means pulling a bunch of women, and I do think we see this, at least a little, in Yunior’s character especially in the first two novels. In This is How You Lose Her, this shows only slightly when he says, “I had an IQ that would have broken you in two but I would have traded it in for a halfway decent face in a second” (Diaz, 31). However, what the reader actually senses, in this novel, is Yunior’s pride in his actual “Dominican-ness” and not the stereotype. When he takes Magda to Santo Domingo, he is severely disappointed when she asks to go the resort. He says, “Exactly where I want to be when I’m in Santo Domingo. In a fucking resort” (Diaz, 13). Furthermore, he is disgusted by the fact that the only actual Dominicans he sees at the resort are the ones who are cleaning or “changing the sheets” (Diaz, 14). He exhibits an outward desire to be within the real Dominican world which consists of poverty and violence, but also his family and his childhood.
ReplyDeleteYunior recognizes that people use being a Dominican as an excuse for a certain behavior despite the fact that it is not: “I doubt that I can speak for all Dominican men but I don’t they can either” (Diaz, 19). I agree with Hannah in that Diaz makes it rather difficult to decipher exactly what being Dominican signifies. I liken it to what people used to say to me and my classmates in Spain, “Oh, you’re American,” because we could never quite understand what it meant or what those people thought they understood about us based purely on the single fact that we were from the U.S. The eternal theme of “Dominican-ness” in Diaz’s work may be his lifelong attempt to demonstrate how a man, particular a Dominican man, can be so much more than the stereotype.
ReplyDeleteZachary’s post brought up an interesting point – do we truly have a good view of how Dominican culture operates? While it is certainly interesting and engaging to look at Dominican’s males’ actions and the females’ responses, it seems that many of these assumptions are challenged in “Alma.” For me, one of the most basic responses that was challenged was simply the thought that Domincan men and women are often placed together out of passion initially and then simple necessity. For instance, in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, it seems that Beli and the Gangster are together because of a strong passion, causing him to cheat on his wife, Trujillo’s sister. When this passion is interrupted (and Beli is consequently beaten severely), the two are no longer a couple. When Beli is impregnated by Lola and Oscar’s father, they are together because of passion, then necessity of the children. Even the children do not keep them together in the long run though. When looking at these relationships and many others in the novels, the timeline of passion-necessity-lack of passion-breakup seems like a cultural norm. Very rarely do we see the American cultural ideal of one monogamous marriage lasting a lifetime. When viewing Alma’s outburst from this perspective, it seems that maybe she is the one who should not be shocked. Rather she should have expected this all along, even if her true heart of hearts longs for a different type of relationship.