Juot Diaz's How To Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl

In “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, Junot Diaz describes how a teenage boy approaches romantic relationships and characterizes the girls based on their race and social class, instead of focusing on their individuality. The author also adds some sarcastic details to point out that a relationship should be built on trust, not massive lies. Juot Diaz successfully applies Gerard Genette’s theory of narratology while depicting his main theme on the impact of gender, race and social class towards one’s behavior towards others.

In his narratology theory, Genette discusses different types of narrator. According to Genette,the narrators include covert character and overt character. Covert narrator is a character not clearly

identified, while overt character is a character with name, personal history, and so on (Barry 225). In “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie", the teenage boy is classified as an overt character because as Genette mentions in his theory, this type of character is identified “as a distinct, named character, with a personal history, gender, a social-class position, distinct likes and dislikes” (Barry 225). The boy’s name is Yunior, he is a young Dominican boy who grows up in a distressed neighborhood called Terrace. At the beginning of the story, the author indicates how self-insecure Yunior is through the way he redecorates his apartment. He hides the pictures of his family with an Afro and the pictures in the campo (meaning the countryside), "especially the one with the half-naked kid dragging a goat on a rope leash" (Diaz 97). "Afro", "campo" are cultural related objects and the teenage boy seems to be ashamed by his African ancestry. He judges the girls based on their race but he himself is insecure of his origins. He tries his best to hide and set aside his true self to gain acceptance from the girls as well as the society.
Another area that Genette mentions in his narratology theory is the narratives.

Frame narrative (primary narrative) comes first, while second narrative comes second and is embedded in the frame narrative. Genette also adds that the embedded narratives are called meta-narratives (Barry 227). In “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, the frame narrative is when the boy lies to his mother that he is sick so he can stay home and get ready for his date (Diaz 97). Meta-narratives are the stories that happen after the frame narrative. One of those meta-narratives is Yunior’s plan for dinner. He maps out perfect dine out restaurants options based on the ethnicity: if the girl is from the local area, El Cibao is a perfect choice. If she is not, he would then take her to Wendy's. Their conversation is also dependent on the race and social class. Yunior plans to order food with his broken Spanish, hoping a Latina girl will correct him and the black girl will be amazed (Diaz 98). If his date is a halfie, Yunior will start talking about the Movement and wonder how their parents met. On the first date, people are supposed to ask questions to get to know each other, but Yunior tends to ask questions to joke around with the girls and have fun with their race. Another narrative embedded in the story is Yunior's plan to get the girls to have physical intimacy with him. He characterizes the girls based on their race by assuming that a local girl is tougher and she may

just hang out with him for awhile and go home. Yunior also thinks that a white girl with compliant nature may give him what he wants on their first date. The halfie is totally different from the white girl. The halfie does not give up that easily. In “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, the halfie admits Yunior is the only kind that ask her out, which means she also suffers from racism. This depicts a stereotype - white girl is more popular compared to black girl and halfie because of their compliant nature.
In his theory, Genette also discusses the basic narrative mode.

Mimesis is defined as a technique that uses details to help audience visualize what happens, and diegesis is to describe directly what happens (Barry 223). In the story “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, the basic narrative mode is mimetic because the audience is given details of the story to visualize what is going on. For example, after the teenage boy cleans up his apartment, he "shower, comb, dress. Sit on the couch and watch TV", a few minutes after, he "get up from the couch and check the parking lot" (Diaz 97-98). The author uses verbs and adjective to describe what the teenage boy does while waiting for the girl to come. Another area that Genette focuses on is the focalisation of the narrative. Focalisation includes internal focalisation - focusing on what the main character thinks and feels, and external focalisation - learning about the main character through observable action and speech (Barry 224). In “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, external focalisation is applied because the focus is mainly on Yunior's action and speech. For example, when a White girl’s mother wants to meet Yunior, he is worried but tries to act cool by running a hand “through your hair like the whiteboys do even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa” (Diaz 97). The fact that Yunior runs his hand through his hair indicates that he is a little scared

to meet with her mother; however, he wants to act more like a white boy so gain the approval and acceptance from the mother. Also, the fact that Yunior uses his own language - Spanish, to fool around with the girls indicates that he wants to act as if he is experienced with girls. Moreover, Yunior is a character with a lot of internal conflicts. He takes advantage of his own language to impress the girls but at the same time, he wants to hide away his origins because he considers it as a minus to his profile and it lowers down his self-confidence.
In his theory, Genette discusses different types of speeches, including mimetic speech (an accurate and direct speech), transposed speech (the writer paraphrases but does not go too far from the actual speech), narratised speech (the author describes the speech in an indirect way) (Barry 230). In “How to Date”, Junot Diaz uses transposed speech: instead of directly quoting the character, he paraphrases the speech but does not change the wording too much. In terms of how is time handled in the story, Genette discusses analepsis and prolepsis. Analeptic narrative means going back in time to relate to an event in the past, while proleptic narrative means moving forward in time to predict near-future events. In “How to date”, Junot Diaz mainly uses simple present to tell the story and the future tense to predict what happens in the near future.
In conclusion, in “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, Diaz indicates the impact of race, social class, gender the way one treats one another. The teenager boy is an ironic symbol: he judges the girls based on their ethnicity and social class but he is somewhat ashamed by his own; he acts as if he is experienced with girls but he is then confused when they actually meet up.