Junot Diaz The Money Essay

Supporting your family members is something we all do. We will do anything for the ones we love and care about. Some families have to do more than others when it comes to this. Especially those with family members living in struggling countries. Junot Diaz reminisces in his story “The Money” of the time during his childhood when his mother collected remittance for his grandparents in Santo Domingo. After returning from a short road trip he discovers the money collected for his grandparents has been stolen, and after some investigating he finds that his friends are the culprits. Diaz steals back what is left of the remittance and returns it to his mother who hides it in a safer place. Money was tight in Diaz’s home, but his mother still took

out part of the weekly earnings to send to her parents. This shows the love and connection they had, and how hard it is to live in underdeveloped countries.
Diaz is able to tell a story about family, justice, and the experience of immigrants through a short memory from his childhood.

He allows the reader to feel his emotions through his language and text instead of blatantly stating how he felt. We also get a sense, from his reading, that his family isn’t very welcome in the area that they live because they are immigrants. He hints at it slightly, but we get the idea that maybe his friends robbed him because of where he was from and figured they could away with it. I felt that the quote that expressed the most emotion behind his life as an immigrant was, “When you’re a recent immigrant and you've put up with a lot of bullshit because of it, it's easy to feel targeted. Like it wasn't just a couple of assholes that had it in for you but the whole neighborhood-- hell, maybe the whole country.” (913). This quote stuck out the most to me because I feel like it gives you some background information. Maybe his family has been targeted before with hate crimes. It just allows you to feel the raw emotion and judgment that immigrants go

through.
There’s something about this writing that I really enjoyed.

I think it's that he writes as if he’s in front of you telling the story. It allowed me to understand his point of view more. I researched some words in this writing and got some background on the immigration from Santo Domingo. I now feel more connected and able to understand the reading. Diaz family was in no way rich or well off, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was being able to take care of their loved ones in Santo Domingo. Many immigrant families send money back to their home countries in order to take care of family members. Holding jobs and making money in these countries can be extremely difficult and a little bit of US currency can go a long way. There are constant power outages in these countries causing high business costs and less pay for workers. Crime is also rampant in these cities because poverty is so high. Diaz’s story expressed how important it was for his mother to take care of her parents. We do not know the situation they are in and if they can work or not. Either way supporting them financially was her main goal which we still see a lot today in immigrant families. To read their point of view and the struggles they go through to support themselves and their families shows why it is so important for them to come to

America.
Right now there is so much in politics about the immigration policy in the US. It made me think about all that is going on and being said about immigrants by our politicians and citizens. I feel that this story really can ring true for us all because we can relate to wanting to support our families. It shows that when we give these people the opportunity to come to the US they are not only trying to better themselves, but family members in other countries. We aren’t just helping them we are helping generations of family members get back on their feet. I think this essay is so important for people to read because we see a side that we don't usually get to see. This successful writer, was an immigrant, he watched his mother support his grandparents and their family with little money to get by. No matter how hard it was for them family always came first. It shows those people who hold stereotypes that we all have the same values; to protect ourselves and our families. I think we should help more and more instead of trying to push immigrants away. Allowing them to come here saves so many more lives than we even know about.