Reading Memoir of "Alma"...www.newyorker.com

“Alma” is a short story that was written by the Dominican-American contemporary writer, Junto Diaz. The fiction piece describes Alma, the narrator’s ex-girlfriend. This girl was not only skinny and had a “big Dominican ass”, but she also had a certain appeal, or kind of flirtatious aura about her, stemming from her Latino heritage. The narrator speaks of his time with Alma as one of the most significant moments in his life. She was crazier in bed than any other girl he’d ever been with, and the narrator stresses this with the graphic descriptions of Alma’s sexual exploits. The story ends with Alma insulting and offending the narrator. She found one of his journals in the house, one which described an affair he was having with a Guyanan girl—something that prompted a swift backlash, which ended in a tragic break up.
Superficially, “Alma” is a short story that deals with the loss of an amazing sexual partner. With a little more analysis, however, it becomes evident that the short story actually deals with the duality of the immigrant experience. Junto Diaz was born and partially raised in the Dominican Republic, and at young age his family moved to the United States, to New Jersey. His experience as a Latino immigrant definitely comes through in “Alma.” Diaz moved to the United States only to find that girls can drive cars, that they cannot cook, and that they don’t care about politics—all of which strongly contrasts with the typical Central or South American girl. Additionally, Diaz portrays Alma as the essence of what it is to be a second/third-generation Latino living in the United States. She struggles to revive her heritage, looking to surround herself with everything Dominican. She tries to balance and find equilibrium between her Americanized ways and the customs of the Old country, thereby creating a duality that is typical of Junto Diaz’s literary work.
“Alma” definitely ties in with what we have been studying in class. Diaz’s masterful use of structure and style make the work a prime example of Demonstrative Rhetoric. Although the narrator is obviously describing a girl that he dated in the past, Diaz makes it out to be as if the reader is the one dating Alma. With sentences like “Alma is slender as a reed, you a steroid-addicted block; Alma loves driving, you books…”, Diaz constructs a story based on the present, based on values. We studied this in class under the category of Demonstrative Rhetoric. What is amazing is that Diaz is narrating a story that should be considered Forensic Rhetoric, as it is an account of something that has happened in the past—an account that involves the personal blame of having lost such an intriguing girl as Alma.