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

“How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)” is a short story penned by Dominican American author Junot Díaz. Originally published in the December 1995 issue of The New Yorker and later included in Díaz’s 1996 short story collection Drown, this semiautobiographical story takes the form of a satirical instruction manual for Dominican American teenage boys looking to date girls. Díaz uses dating as a lens through which to critique stereotypes based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender, ultimately emphasizing the harmful nature of such generalizations.

This guide refers to the version of “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie) published in The New Yorker in 1995. Citations in this guide use paragraph numbers for reference. A digital version is available on NewYorker.com.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature discussions about sexual assault, racism, and racial stereotyping.

Told in second-person point of view, the story begins on a day when the narrator, a Dominican American teen, decides to stay home to avoid visiting family in Union City, New Jersey. His aunt in Union City squeezes his genitals to gauge his maturation, and he wants to avoid that experience. He pretends to be sick, but his mother knows he is lying. In reality, the narrator needs to prepare for a date.

The narrator runs through scenarios of how he will stage his home for his date. He removes the cheese (he calls it “government cheese” [Paragraph 2]) his family receives as part of government assistance to address food insecurity, leaving it in the refrigerator if the girl is from the neighborhood and in successively more hidden places if the girl is an outsider or white. He takes down photos that show his afro and some of his family in the rural Dominican Republic, “especially that one with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope” (Paragraph 2). The narrator grooms and dresses himself carefully.

The narrator has done everything he can to impress the three possible girls (and their parents), so now all he can do is wait. A girl from the neighborhood will show up when she wants to and may even bring over a crowd of friends. An outsider or a white girl may not show up at all, then present insincere apologies the next day. The narrator will call the girl. If her father picks up and sounds like someone with power or authority—maybe even a white man—the narrator will hang up.

Eventually, the girl will show up. A white girl will come in with her mother so the mother can reassure herself that this Dominican teen is a safe date for her daughter. The girl who is white will be pretty, so he will be willing to bear the embarrassment of meeting a parent. If the girl is African American and an outsider, she will be a girl who has grown up with all the trappings of a middle-class or affluent childhood. If the girl is multiracial, her mother will be the white parent; the mother will complain about the directions the narrator so carefully wrote out, and the narrator will re-write them to ingratiate himself with her. None of these niceties will happen if the girl is from the Terrace.

If the girl is from the neighborhood, the narrator will take her to a hole-in-the-wall Dominican restaurant and try to order in his iffy Spanish. The Dominican American girl won’t say anything about his errors, a Latina will correct him, but a white girl or one who is multiracial be impressed. If the girl is an outsider, the pair will go to Wendy’s instead. The narrator will tell her stories about the neighborhood, like the time a neighbor’s hoard of Army tear gas blew up; the narrator’s mother recognized the smell because she remembered it from “the year the United States invaded” the Dominican Republic (Paragraph 12).

The narrator hopes they don’t run into Howie, a neighborhood menace with two aggressive dogs who kill cats. Howie is sure to ask in crude terms if the girl is the narrator’s sexual partner. Howie is also physically imposing because of his weight, so avoiding a fight with him will help the narrator to avoid humiliation in front of his date. Howie will likely just walk off to avoid soiling his new sneakers. A neighborhood girl will loudly curse Howie out during the encounter, while an outsider will only mutter under her breath.

Dinner will be hard because the narrator hates small talk. A girl who is multiracial will tell the narrator about how her parents, activists during the 1960s, took their radical politics a step further by marrying across racial lines. The narrator won’t repeat his brother’s comment about such relationships being a sign of racial inauthenticity. The narrator will suavely commiserate with the girl. She will open up and tell him all about how people who are African American mistreat her—hence, her dislike of them. Afterward, the narrator and the girl will walk the neighborhood.

Back at the apartment, sex will come up. A girl from the neighborhood will have a nice body, but that doesn’t mean she will do anything more than kiss you reluctantly. A white girl will probably have sex. Before the sex, the white girl will compliment the narrator’s eyes and call him Spanish (he isn’t Spanish). The narrator will love the white girl back because he loves everything about the appearance of white girls. Afterward, the narrator will call one of his friends to brag. The girl will clean herself up and move to the beat of the Dominican music that comes from outside.

Mostly there is no sex. The girl who is multiracial will recoil when the narrator attempts to kiss her and touch her hair without permission. She will complain that only Dominican boys or African American boys ask her out; the narrator knows she wants white boys to ask her out instead. At school she seems carefree, but not here. The narrator won’t know how to interact with her. Afterward, the narrator will hear the comb pulling through her hair. When she leaves, the narrator won’t go downstairs to see her off because the girl won’t want him to; the date will have been a bad one, and the narrator will ignore the girl’s call later. The story ends with the narrator enjoying having the apartment to himself for once but also mulling over the date. He will put the cheese back out so his mother doesn’t get angry.