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.
Themes
Racial and Ethnic Identity: Double Consciousness
One of the most prominent features of the text is not just the narrator’s relationship to prospective romantic partners, but some of the different aspects of setting them up from within a clear cross-cultural divide. The idea of the “double consciousness” is a term first used when W. E. B. Dubois coined it in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). It refers to the different barriers that minorities or people of color deal with when interacting with people outside of their race. It also refers the idea that people must think of themselves in terms of a duality existing as themselves but also as a being within a subordinate role in a dominant culture that does not belong to them. Double consciousness also relates to adjusting social niceties, speech, and behavior when dealing with other races in situations where it is beneficial to appear to conform to the dominant culture or to appear as non-threatening.
The narrator’s double consciousness is apparent in relation to the narrator’s attempt at romantic or physical relationships with different women of various nationalities throughout the text. The different approaches to courtship that are described for different ethnicities point to a need to understand how the same action can have different outcomes among people from different cultural backgrounds. Considering that most of these are framed by the narrator’s hesitance to disclose his race, these interactions seem less accommodating and more oppressive. Interactions and the choices they carry can either be a way to navigate social structures or into the fractured reality of the narrator’s inner world. The presence of the narrator’s mother, a bully, and location don't appear solely as barriers, but as touchstones for different behavior points toward the idea of double consciousness as well. The protagonist is not just using one part of his identity to make decisions based on his views of ethnicity.
The protagonist uses social fluidity to his advantage for outcomes that would be more favorable throughout the text. These choices aren’t just about dating. Double consciousness in action allows the protagonist to easily turn his attention to coexisting among other races. Ultimately, the idea of double consciousness within this text stems from the ease with which the protagonist can move between different races in terms of his behavior and speech, but also adjust his understanding of his place in the world based on race.
Multiculturalism and the Diaspora
The narrator’s double consciousness exists in the context of a multicultural world. That parts of that world are oppressive goes back to the concept diaspora—a scattering of people from one part of the world to other parts of the world. The narrator is still holding on to parts of his life in the Dominican Republic, whether it is the barrier of language with his ability to speak Spanish, his economic status in the United States, or how unfavorably he sees his own distinctive ethnic features.
The story shows how unwilling the narrator is to disclose where he is from. While this could be a way to accommodate preferences of the girls and their families, it also seems that the narrator is ashamed of where he comes from are negative. His decision to hide pictures of his family when they were still in the Dominican Republic underscores his sense of shame about coming from the Dominican Republic.
Diaz doesn’t frame multiculturalism as a way to experience other cultures. It is rather a source of division between people based on custom. The narrator’s distinct expectations of each of the girls based on their ethnicities and race illustrate this point. Part of this trend comes from the fact that moving to the United States is something that separates the narrator from some part of himself as well as the world around him. He still hears his family talk in Spanish but doesn’t speak Spanish fluently, which places a barrier between the narrator and his family. When one of the girls identifies the narrator as Spanish, he does not correct her. He often hides his immigrant experience and his culture. These efforts show that his actions are based on the fear of being seen as the Other.
The narrator is different from those around him, economically and ethnically, but his desire and inability to assimilate seem to be his biggest issues. Thematically, this thwarted desire is symbolic of those who are intrinsically tied to their homelands after being forced to move or coexist with strangers in a new land.
Performativity and Social Interaction
The narrator is an enigma only because it is difficult to gauge who he is by his actions. Instead, the reader learns the most about him through how he hides parts of himself from others through precise action. Why he does this is partially to land a date or receive some form of physical intimacy, but it is also a product of anticipating and meeting social expectations by performing an identity.
Characters within the story seem to fit into what is expected of them based on their assumptions about the Other, and many of these assumptions are based on race, class, and gender. The first time this theme appears is when the narrator hides images of his life in the Dominican Republic and signs of disarray in his home. In this case the socioeconomic connotations of his background are severe enough that he thinks it is better to hide them. The narrator’s desire to present the expected self to others is only possible if he obscures who he might otherwise be.
The narrator’s shifting identity is also apparent in his varied social interactions with each kind of girl. The narrator’s expectations and behavior differ based on the race, class, and ethnicity of the girls. The dismissive tone he has toward girls from his neighborhood as opposed to the amount of work put into catching the interest of those who live farther away is vast. Instances like these show that there are some expectations for him and others within the text.
Not all performances of identity are inconsequential. When the narrator gropes the girl who is multiracial because he believes her identity will make her open to his advances, he miscalculates because of his reliance on stereotypes of the Other based on race and gender. After the encounter, the narrator is at a loss for words and even refuses to take the girl’s calls. The narrator can’t keep up his performance when social interactions don’t play out as he expects. Overall, the text shows that social expectations are some of the strongest source of cultural conflicts within the story.
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