Fiesta by Ju-not Diaz

Fiesta 1980, written by Junot Diaz, is about a Hispanic family that lives in New York. Their relatives, tío (uncle) Miguel and tía(aunt) Yrma, just moved from the Dominican Republic to the United states and therefore they are throwing their aunt and uncle a party. There is much representation on how the Hispanic people really live embedded within this short story. Such as the different roles of each family member, the extreme since of loyalty, actions that benefit everyone, and the different ways of showing affection and celebrating.

Before Junot Diaz received acclaim for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” he was better known in fiction circles for his short stories about immigrants and the American dream. In “Fiesta, 1980,” Diaz writes about the struggles of an immigrant family as they wake up from a nightmare in Santo Domingo only to find themselves in another nightmare, except this time it's in America.

Diaz's characters assimilate to an American way of life with changes in appearance and language. A young Yunior and his family alternate between speaking in English and Spanish, sometimes using both at the same time. The children even begin using new American curse words (“Chickenshit”). They learn new cultural rules, throw away past behavior (“Back in Santo Domingo, he'd be getting laid by now”), and accept change in order to survive.

No one in Diaz's world is one-dimensional. Yunior's father, Papi, is probably the most complex character in the story. He's the patriarch of his family; he's often cold and bitter towards them (“My Father the Torturer”) and breaks them apart with his affair with another woman. But Diaz places in subtle implications that make us think there's more to him. Diaz gives Papi his moments. When he cleans up his son's vomit for the first time—that “was ...