How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)

Junot Diaz weaves second-person narration, language, and multiple themes together to offer social commentary on socioeconomic and racial background throughout “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie).” He complicates his representation of these elements by developing and portraying multiple levels of intimacy throughout the story and exploring the meaning of identity.

The narration of “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)” mimics the general tone of an instruction manual but subverts any objectivity for something more personal: intimacy. There are multiple layers of intimacy, both symbolic and literal, throughout the tale. From the opening lines there is a high level of intimacy established between the narrator and the reader. Symbolically they appear almost immediately as one and the same. The caveat is that this seemingly intimate connection between the narrator and reader traps the reader as much as it does the narrator due to the cyclical nature of the plot.

Diaz creates a sometimes suffocating intimacy between the narrator and reader in several ways. This is done primarily through the use of voice; the story is told from a second-person perspective and eschews formality for symbolic impact. One of the early lines presents this idea: “You’ve already told them you are too sick to go to Union City to visit that tía who likes to squeeze your nuts. (He’s gotten big, she’ll say)” (Paragraph 1). Diaz introduces the narrator with this uncomfortable, inappropriate intimacy and uses second-person narration to make the reader experience that intimacy alongside the narrator.

From that exposition on, Diaz relies on second-person narration to develop the themes of Multiculturalism and the Diaspora and Racial and Ethnic Identity. The use of Spanish language in the text is key in this regard (See: Index of Terms). There are many instances of the use of Spanish within the text, with most of them designed to illuminate hidden (from the reader) parts of the immigrant experience. For example, part of preparation for a date is hiding “photos of your family in the campo [field], especially that one with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope” (Paragraph 2)—a setting far removed from life in a city in New Jersey. This moment introduces tension in the text where the narrator hides aspects of his race and class in order to appear more familiar to potential partners. The use of Spanish also creates a soft barrier between the narrator and the reader if the reader does not understand the language. The reader must use context to glean meaning. Through his use of Spanish that is not translated, Diaz makes the reader more intimate with the immigrant experience, one in which there are constant clashes of culture within everyday life. This idea accounts for why the narrator is hiding aspects of his cultural identity to appeal to others within the story.

While this kind of intimacy could be disorienting for the reader, it also symbolically helps Diaz develop the idea of the double consciousness, reconciling the dominant culture with the Other, at the forefront of the text. It also shows how many different ranges that conflict truly possesses. Methods of courtship act as a guide for the reader to experience double consciousness. For instance, the approach of dealing with local girls as opposed to “out of towners…black girls who grew up with ballet and Girl Scouts, and have three cars in their driveway” (Paragraph 10).

Double consciousness is also apparent in the narrator’s intimate interactions and distinct responses to the girls. When interacting with the girl who is white, the narrator instructs the reader to “[t]ell her that you love her hair, her skin, her lips, because in truth, you love them more than you love your own” (Paragraph 12). This example shows a stark difference in the dismissive and objectifying tone of the previous quote. When taken together these two quotes show the disembodied whole of the protagonist. He is only as objectively real as the situation allows him to be.

The racial and ethnic tension of those around him, along with the social implications of these tensions, cause the narrator and his assumed identity to shift throughout the narrative. Language becomes a way to mask identity and to create a projection of normalcy or conformity, a part of cultural reconciliation between being Dominican and being American. The narrator must pay attention to other characters’ actions and identities to understand what to present to everyone else to maintain this façade.

This performance of identity is most present in the narrator’s interactions with girls and their parents. The social aspects of the intimate encounters with girls are peppered throughout the narrative. One instance is when the narrator states, “the directions you gave her were in your best handwriting, so her parents don’t think you’re in idiot” (Paragraph 10). The narrator hopes to impress the girl with his writing, but it is the parent he must impress instead. He appeases the disgruntled parent by rewriting the directions. This layered navigation of daughter and parent shows how most of the narrator’s actions in the story are for others. In other words, he is still actively moving away from the image of the “Other” or the outsider as much as possible while pursuing some form of intimacy. This accounts for the overall impersonal physical and romantic gestures in the text. The narrator is constantly trying to show something about himself, and it seems as if this is more important than any romantic or physically gratifying endeavor.

When looking at this idea in relation to instances of masculinity in the text, this performance makes sense. There is a conditional and contextual standpoint for how the narrator thinks of himself as a man or as a potential partner. This creates one of the other conflicts within the theme of masculine performativity and conformity. Diaz uses the early scene of the aunt groping the narrator against his present-day refusal to visit her to represent the narrator’s maturation. That process of growth continues throughout the story, with intimate physical interaction offering another way for the narrator to navigate recognition, difference, or control.

The potential interaction with the character Howie offers a further glimpse into how the narrator represents his masculinity. The narrator comments on the possibility of hoping not to run into his nemesis, saying he “weighs two-hundred pounds and could eat you if he wanted. But at the field he’ll turn away. He has new sneakers and doesn’t want them muddy” (Paragraph 14). The most notable quality of this interaction is that presentation is established to be more important than a physical altercation between rivals or the presentation of strength.

Even when Howie taunts the narrator, “Is that your new fuck buddy?” (Paragraph 13) and the different ways dates of certain socioeconomic backgrounds may react show how impersonal some of these interactions are and highlight how much more real the situation themselves appear. The hint of danger or the inability to follow through with dating or courtship is a unifying obstacle that most men in the story experience. Taking into account multiple instances of performativity, the reader can understand that there is a divide in culture and the expectations of others.

If the idea of identity is contextual, then one way that the narrator gains control over his self-presentation is through the performance of courtship; the ritual offers some autonomy. The possibility of choice is emphasized more than the static outcome of dating or social interactions because it means that the characters can fit into a role independent of their racial or class background. The women are hollow choices because it is more about performance than physical or emotional connection. Instead, the struggle is for being able to identify something familiar in a world where the narrator experiences his identity as destabilized.

The instructions of the story are not just for dating. They are for navigating social structures based on race and class. This helps show that the conflicts of the story are mostly where multiple cultures intersect. As a result, the audience can see how the speaker places themselves within the world. Through these ideas, Diaz shows how a person with a contingent identity may think of themselves in an environment where they are multiple things at once.