The Money by Junot Diaz

Comprehension

Diaz communicates to his readers that he grew up poor in the first paragraph. “She chipped dollars off the cash Papi gave her for daily expenses, forced our already broke family to live even more broker.”

The money in the “forbidden stash” is being referred to the money Diaz’s mom is saving up to send to her parents back in Santo Domingo. I think this distinction does make sense, because it gives the reader a notice that the “forbidden stash” is very important to his mom since it takes them a while to collect the money.

Diaz solved “the Case of the Stupid Morons”, by unlatching the window from the main dope’s apartment restroom. As they left to the park Diaz pretended to have forgotten something in his house and left, but instead of heading to his house he headed back to the main dope’s and went inside the apartment through the unlatched window. He looked for his stolen belongings, and left the apartment with what was his.

What Diaz means in the last sentence of the last paragraph, is that all the trouble he went through to get the money back when the people who are going to receive the money won’t know what happened.

Purpose and Audience

From Diaz’s expressions I can tell he is a really smart boy. He uses these expressions to give us a visual of what is really happening.

Diaz’s main idea is how his is struggling in the states; yet they have to send money to his grandparents back home. His thesis statement could’ve started like this; “Who knew being in the states was going to be difficult, when everyone back home would say it was a door opener for us.” This sentence could be added after the last sentence in the first paragraph.

I think Diaz is just sharing his memories from how hard times were when he was a kid, and when his family first