Lessons from the Alpha Male:
“How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” by Junot Diaz Every red-blooded American male reaches a zenith in his life when he has finally joined the company of men, and been deemed worthy to receive a lifetime of collected wisdom and tutelage from his elder “packmates”. This knowledge comes in both lewd and often brutally honest sentiments that can induce feelings of excitement and unabashed shame, but regardless of the emotions evoked, it is a necessary rite of passage signifying a young man’s entrance into the world of his peers. This transformation and the hesitance involved is masterfully scripted in Junot Diaz’s “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”. The dialogue that plays out in this story is remarkably descriptive but demonstrates often the characterizations we accept as young men that masquerade as truths and become almost necessary for our acceptance by our gender. Diaz removes the veil on this time in a young man’s life and allows the reader into a world of confusion, pressure, and eagerness which highlights the extraneous difficulties of being both male and a minority in America during these crucial formative years. In life, the first step of any journey begins with preparation and Diaz opens his story with an older male, which who believe to be a friend, instructing a younger pupil on how to organize and clean his house in accordance with the economic status of the girl he will be having over to his home. The young man receives specific instructions of how to carry out his deception dependent upon where the girl is from:
Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. If the girl's from the Terrace stack the boxes behind the milk. If she's from the Park or Society Hill hide the cheese in the cabinet above the oven, way up where she'll never see (255).
Diaz makes reference