Kaliman

Working my way backward through Junot Díaz, I found his first book Drown more memorable than his second, Oscar Wao. Because Drown is a collection of short stories, the language is sharper, tighter and more poetic. As a new author, the writer was on a budget; whereas Wao spreads into footnotes like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat dosa diner.

Obviously, my favorite story was one about a wrestler whose face was gnawed off by a pig when he was a child. Obviously. Since Mexican lucha libre wrestlers already wear masks, this bedenimed man hoped to become a wrestler in America. The one I liked least was about a sad crackhouse ho turning tricks on a filthy basement mattress.

There were fewer desi references in Drown than in Oscar Wao. Like Deevani, Díaz learned bits of the culture by dating a desi:

… though this neighborhood was rough… Jo-Jo didn’t need to put a grate over his store. The local kids left him alone and instead terrorized a Pakistani family down the street. The family owned an Asian grocery store that looked like a holding cell, windows behind steel mesh, door reinforced with steel plates. [’Negocios (Businesses)’]

The Kaliman in this passage is a star of Mexican comics and radio shows:

Each week Padre Lou lets him buy a comic book… Today he buys Kaliman, who takes no shit and wears a turban. If his face were covered he’d be perfect. [’No Face’]

The stories in Drown refer to a consistent universe; most are about the same family, and those which are not are about others in the same town. Two stories, about a bi-curious teen and a runner, together remind me of the protagonist in Graffiti My Soul. ‘How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, Halfie,’ a satirical handbook to dating girls above your station, was fabulous. Like Wao, the book is permeated with uselessness with girls and a desperate longing for an absent father.

Previously: Revenge of the Dominican nerds