131 pages 4 hours read

Junot Díaz

Drown

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1995

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Essay Topics

1.

Choose one story and analyze the characters within it through the lens of intersectionality. How do race, gender, class, and sexual orientation converge upon your chosen character(s) to produce layered inequalities and/or social and interpersonal conflict?

2.

Choose three male characters and form a five-paragraph literary analysis essay which parses, in detail, the themes about masculinity that Díaz articulates through them.

3.

What is the role of women in Drown? Choose three female characters and write a five-paragraph literary analysis essay that explains the role and function of female characters in the collection. Does Díaz use female characters to mount his critique of hypermasculinity, or does he ultimately fall into heterosexist traps through his own representation of them? Or is it a mixture of both?