This episode explores what the American dream looks like for Dominican immigrants in the United States through the work of Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Díaz. Díaz is the author of three books, Drown, (1996), The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2008), and This Is How You Lose Her (2012). This episode will primarily draw on the characters in The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. Is the American dream, which has traditionally been predicated on a particular economic outcome, applicable to everybody? Does that dream stand for Dominican-American immigrants? I’ll explore these questions in today’s podcast.

Sources: 

Díaz, Junot. Drown. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996.

—. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.

—.The Search for Decolonial Love: An Interview with Junot Díaz Paula M.L. Moya.

Boston Review, 19 May 2012. Web. 13 April 2017. <http://bostonreview.net/books- ideas/paula-ml-moya-decolonial-love-interview-junot-d%C3%ADaz>.

—. This Is How You Lose Her. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012.

Figueroa, Yomaira. "Faithful Witnessing as Practice: Decolonial Readings of Shadows of Your Black Memory and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." Hypatia 30.4 (2015): 641- 656.

Grasmuck, Sherri and Patricia Pessar. "Dominicans in the United States: First- and Second-

Generation Settlement, 1960-1990." Pedraza, Silvia and Rubén G Rumbaut. Origins and

Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996. 280-292.

Moreno, Marisel. "Debunking Myths, Destabilizing Identities: A Reading of Junot Díaz's "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie"." Afro-Hispanic Review 26.2 (2007): 103-117.

Pessar, Patricia. A Visa For a Dream: Dominicans in the United States. Needham Heights: Prentice Hall, 1995.

This episode discusses how food and foodways are products of culture, and how those foodways are appropriated in the American South. In particular, we will look at literatures produced from and about the foodways in Savannah, Georgia, a rising tourist destination. How are foodways commodified and appropriated in the South? And in what ways do we see this phenomenon more broadly? These questions will be answered int his episode, as we dive in to different literatures surrounding Savannah’s foodways.

In this episode, I explore the early influence that James Joyce had on the short works of Djuna Barnes--two prolific, early 20th century authors. I discuss the similarities between Barnes' short story, "Night," and James Joyce's "The Dead" from Dubliners. Much scholarship has been devoted to the influence of Joyce on Barnes' novels, but scholarship is scarce concerning his influence on her short stories as a budding writer in Paris after WWI.