The two stories I have chosen are Aguantando and Edison, New Jersey. The first is about a poor family in Puerto Rico. The protagonist, the youngest son referred to as ‘Yunior,’  recounts the stories of his childhood and his absentee father (Diaz 69-88). The second is about a retail worker in New Jersey, who is unnamed. He tells us about some of his history and his attitude towards life while trying to get a man named Pruitt his pool table (Diaz 121-140). 

There’s a lot to unpack in these stories, which I found to be interesting but slow-paced at times. I think in and of themselves they reject the “black-white binary” that often overshadows our country (Delgado & Stefanic 92). While discussions of discrimination or poverty often focus in on black Americans, Diaz showcases Latino protagonists and families facing these troubles. I think the fact that I had to keep google translate open in front of me as I read also shows our country’s preference for the English language, another issue that LatCrit scholars focus on (93). 

Intersectionality is found all over in Diaz’s work. Looking at Aguantando, we see a single Latino mother, struggling to get by and support her children. Yunior tells us that when his brother Rafa caught worms, “it was only be skimping on our dinners that Mami could afford to purchase Verminox” (Diaz 71). I feel like her husband took advantage of her, leaving her to take care of their sons while he went to work in the U.S. This could be because she’s a woman, assumed to be destined for a domestic role. Along with that, he could have just been a bad person. Miranda mentions ominously that Yunior’s father “took too much”, wishing, “if only your mother could have noticed his true nature earlier” (76). In Edison, New Jersey, the protagonist faces clear discrimination as a Latino man, however in terms of intersectionality I would focus on Pruitt’s maid. She’s black, with Spanish being her native language. Since she “stared…blankly” when the protagonist tried to converse in English, I believe she might have faced difficulties in this country due to her language barrier (133). She’s also young, as the protagonist estimates that she “couldn’t have been older than twenty”, and often younger people are not taken as seriously in our country (126). She’s unhappy in her position as a housekeeper; she didn’t answer the door the first couple of times the protagonist and Wayne came by because she “wanted to piss him [Pruitt] off” (133). Though she lives in the house and doesn’t have means to leave. If you want to talk about a person presumed to be destined for domestic work, I would look no further than our country’s history with white people hiring people of color to clean their houses. Something that is still quite active today. With her being a woman, I think we clearly see a combination of gender-based discrimination and race/ethnicity-based discrimination. 

I don’t believe either of our protagonists are attempting assimilation. Yunior’s family doesn’t live in America, and so they have no reason to. We can guess about their father, how he’s getting by in a different country, but it’s not something that touches the rest of his family. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the protagonist is definitely making an effort to stay true to himself. While he works for (often white) “doctors, diplomats, surgeons, presidents of universities, ladies in slacks,” he doesn’t put their needs before his own (Diaz 122). If he has been mistreated by his client, he will “cram bubble bath drops into [his] pockets and throw fist-sized wads of toilet paper into the toilet. [He’ll] take a dump if [he] can and leave that for them” (123).

If a critical race theorist were too look at these two stories, they might notice the disparities between the Latino characters and everyone else. In Aguantando, they might point to the lack of a father figure and the struggle in a single-income home, as well as Yunior at nine not being able to read or “write [his] own name” (Diaz 82). In Edison, New Jersey, one might look at how easy it would have been for the protagonist and Wayne to lose their jobs because some white man got upset. They might see the discrimination, for example the boss calling him to help on a sale “only when he needs [his] Spanish” (125), and women of color as domestic servants. They might also share the protagonist’s annoyance with people of color dating white people.

In regards to the American dream, once again I don’t see much of a connection in the first story other than perhaps the father felt he’d get it in America. Aside from Rafa mentioning that his father would “be taller” because “Northamerian food makes people that way” (87), there isn’t much commentary on the country. In the second story I think it’s safe to say the American Dream is challenged. Pruitt has it, with affording a nice house, a live-in servant and “newly planted rosebushes” (121). There’s “photos of him on vacations, on beaches” and the protagonist guesses he’s “probably been to more countries than I know the capitals for” (134). Meanwhile, we see at the forefront of this story the people behind the dream, the ones building the frame of it. The people that come to install your pool table, or clean your house, that will never reach the dream because it keeps getting pushed further out of their grasp. For our protagonist, buying things for his girlfriend was “the closet [he’s] come to feeling rich” (125). He spends time wondering “how long it’d take [him] to buy a pool table honestly”, deciding it’d be “two and a half years” if he were to give up the majority of food and clothing (128). So to say, ‘anyone can make it in America’ is not only foolish, but also plays into our country’s history of ignoring the struggles of other races. Or rather, creating said struggles intentionally. Diaz shows us this quite plainly without ever having to say it out loud.

Since I read Delgado and Stefanic first, I was easily able to see some of the issues they were highlighting in action during these stories, which was very helpful. Overall, I hope to continue looking at these kinds of stock stories with skepticism, because a stock story is all the American Dream is.