How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)

Junot Diaz weaves second-person narration, language, and multiple themes together to offer social commentary on socioeconomic and racial background throughout “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie).” He complicates his representation of these elements by developing and portraying multiple levels of intimacy throughout the story and exploring the meaning of identity.

The narration of “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)” mimics the general tone of an instruction manual but subverts any objectivity for something more personal: intimacy. There are multiple layers of intimacy, both symbolic and literal, throughout the tale. From the opening lines there is a high level of intimacy established between the narrator and the reader. Symbolically they appear almost immediately as one and the same. The caveat is that this seemingly intimate connection between the narrator and reader traps the reader as much as it does the narrator due to the cyclical nature of the plot.

Diaz creates a sometimes suffocating intimacy between the narrator and reader in several ways. This is done primarily through the use of voice; the story is told from a second-person