One of Papi’s first apartment-mates Eulalio spoke to Papi in English when they first met and shook his head on learning that Papi knew no English (171).

Meanwhile the fluency in English is also crucial to the character’s social status within his low class Latino community. The author seems to be implying here that Papi’s Spanish accent of “New York” was likely to alert the marshals to check his visa because in general public’s impression Spanish accent and illegality were highly interwoven. When the main character Papi hitchhiked from Virginia to New York in a police car, he carefully omitted his usual pronunciation “Nueva” and “Yol” and successfully avoided the marshals’ suspicion of the expiration of his visa (175). Among other social variables the writer also addresses is how language the immigrant speaks affects his social standing and self recognition.Īt the surface level, Junot Diaz subtly hints in his story how his character’s linguistic deviation from the mainstream-in speaking Spanish as a native language and speaking English in a heavy Spanish accent-could derogate the way he is treated by larger society in the United States.

Through the lens of a young Latino male immigrant struggling in poverty in the United States, the author examines a variety of social variables associated with deprivation, such as poverty being urban or rural, poverty being racially marked, how poverty shifts immigrants’ cultural values especially perspective on marriage, etc. Junot Diaz’s short story “Negocios” is a fictionalization of the writer’s biography exploringhis father’s immigration from Dominican Republic to the United States and his own later immigration.

Negocios by junot diaz