Upbringing By Junot Diaz Summary

Upbringing is an important function in each society. The main aim of upbringing is formation of newborn child’s personality and his subsequent development. Junot Diaz talks about the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional home and how it affects adult relationships. He wants us to be aware of how our upbringing can make us feel lost as adults or how it can be a foreshadowing of our adult selves.

Ever young child will look up to their parents when they are younger, some might be happy with their parent’s parenting abilities, and some while disgusted will mimic those behaviors when they are older because those actions will lie in the unconscious.

David Gates, an American journalist and novelist states that Junot Diaz thinks he doesn't quite

belong in this tradition that suggests he's smack-dab in the middle.” This is depicted in most of Diaz’s story about being lost unhappy and wanting to secure the feeling of others and also trying to spare his own feelings. This is shown mostly in the story “FIESTA, 1980” where the character Yunior knew what his father was doing was wrong, he did not know how to handle it so he kept it secret from his mother and would puke every time, he was in a closed space with his family, like the car.
This is where we see Yunior’s first influences of a relationship, you have a mother that is either naïve or one that is greatly uninformed and doesn’t know exactly what is happening under her nose. These past memories of his father cheating and lying to mother will influence his behavior, to either cheat or to turn his life around and not end up in a vicious cycle of hurting people.
Another take on Junot Diaz’s character Yunior is by Maud Newton a writer, editor and blogger, who expanded on the idea that “Papi, the father in “Fiesta, 1980” is an adulteress womanizer, who at times is temperamental and aggressive towards the punishment of his children,” she focused more on the disciplinary aspects that Yunior had in his earlier life and how it could have possibly affected his relationships in the future.
“This time the damage was pretty minimal, nothing Papi couldn't wash off the door with a blast of the hose. He was pissed, though; he jammed his finger into my cheek, a nice solid thrust. That was the way he was with his punishments: imaginative. Earlier that year I'd written an essay in school called "My Father the Torturer," but the teacher made me write a new one. She thought I was kidding, (Diaz, Fiesta).” The example that the father set also explains why Yunior had a difficult time with getting himself together after the break up and being able to get back to reality. He was conditioned to keep everything and exploded when things where too tough, the only difference is in his adult life instead of throwing up he would get involved in risky behaviors.
In Yunior’s childhood years we see a shift in his behavior, instead of feeling a bit guilty when he disrespected women like he would have when he witness his father doing it to his mom.

He did it without remorse. This is first seen in Nilda by Junot Diaz, when he tells us Nilda, his brother's girlfriend, has "a chest you wouldn't believe,” this is him practically praising his bother for landing an attractive girlfriend that could make others jealous. He didn’t view it as maybe his bother loved her or anything he felt like looks was the main concern for being with someone. He didn’t go after anyone with his heart, he went for what was on the surface because he spent years dehumanizing women, he didn’t know the difference between physical and emotional attraction. Another example is in Miss Lora by Diaz himself, when Yunior began a sexual relationship with Miss Lora, his neighbor and substitute teacher. "Miss Lora was too skinny. Had no hips whatsoever. No breasts, either, no ass, even her hair failed to make the grade.” Even though Yunior was enjoying the time he spent with Miss Lora, whenever they weren’t having sex, all her “bad” attributes became a problem that he has to mentally analyze and chastise her. Joe Fassler published the article How Junot Diaz Wrote a Sexist Character, but Not a Sexist Book in The Atlantic and he described this as “Yunior lov[ing] these women [and wanting to respect them, because]….he would do anything to keep them if only he knew

how.”
In “The Cheater's Guide to Love," we finally see a change in Yunior.

He flips through the folder sent to him by his ex-fiancée. He's kept it "hidden under [his] bed," away from us, and himself, because we didn’t learn about it until he took it out. The folder contains "copies of all the e-mails and photos from the cheating days, the ones the ex-found and compiled and mailed to you a month after she ended it." He went through the folder twice. And he admits that he was wrong and he admits that he lied and is hurting. He admits for the first time, even though "it kills" him, his ex was right to

go.
Yunior begins to write. He made a confession: “The half-life of love is forever.” The women he has loved and lost will be a part of him forever. And he is sorry.