A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Latino

Junot Díaz is currently considered to be one of the most prominent Latino/a American writers in the United States.With two short story collections,Drown and This is How You Lose Her,and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,Díaz's works have proven to be a key development for Latin-American writings and for American literature in general.Díaz's three volumes track the formation of Yunior,the protagonist and the narrator throughout Díaz's writings to date and portray Yunior's unusual development from a ghetto boy to a writer and intellectual.From the perspective of K(?)nstlerroman,this thesis aims to analyze Yunior's growth in Junot Díaz's three volumes.The main body of this thesis consists of three parts:Chapter one borrows the basic structure of K(?)nstlerroman as a framework to analyze Yunior's personal growth from his childhood to adolescence,then to his adulthood.After experiencing the temptation of "No Face" in childhood,the danger of "drawing"in adolescent sexual desires,and the final epiphany of losing the one he loves in adulthood,Yunior ultimately finds writing as his redemption.In the process,diasporic experience and Dominican masculinity are the two factors that shape Yunior's development as an artist.Chapter two provides an analysis of Yunior's self-portrait as a young Latino artist.As the claimed author of the three volumes,Yunior gives a profound reflection of himself in his writings.He creates an imaginative figure Ysrael,or "No Face" as his mirror figure,who links his three volumes.Moreover,Yunior prefers Oscar as the representation of his positive self and American identity.In contrast,he chooses Ramón and his replica,Rafa as the representation of his negative self and Dominican identity.Only when he symbolically "kills" these two absolute trends of himself can Yunior find his position between the two different identities,and grow into a "full",man.Chapter three focuses on Yunior's portrayal of Dominican Americans.Dominican diaspora and Dominican masculinity are the factors resulting in his personal sorrow in his growth.They are results of the curse for all Dominicans.In order to counter the curse brought by Columbus,Yunior discovers the historical causes of the Dominican diaspora and Dominican masculinity,and rewrites them in his works.As an artist,Yunior finally realizes the healing power of writing.For him,writing is not only a healing process for past traumas,but also the final therapy for healing the greed and violence embodied in the longstanding curse.Yunior also points out that the Latino writers should write for their own people instead of writing for white audiences.K(?)nstlerroman,one class of Bildungsroman,deals with the youth and development of an individual who becomes,or is on the threshold of becoming,an artist.Reading Díaz's works as a K(?)nstlerroman allows for an investigation into the aesthetic project that Díaz theorizes.This thesis traces the power of writing available to the engaged Dominican American writer and intellectual.The protagonist Yunior's Dominican-American immigrant identity distinguishes Díaz's K(?)nstlerroman from other examples of K(?)nstlerroman.By portraying how Yunior becomes a writer,Díaz shows his aspiration to be a creative writer,to be successful,and expertly gives a portrait of the artist as a young Latino in his works.