Abstract:
Junot Díaz’s short story “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)” and
Emma Amos’s painting “Head First” from the “Falling Figures” collection explore the conflict
of identity among Black individuals in America, drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’s theory of double
consciousness (1903). Both works depict the struggle between the real and disguised self,
shaped by sociocultural and economic politics. Díaz employs symbolic instructions to reveal the
protagonist’s internalized desire to emulate whiteness while concealing his socioeconomic and
ethnic reality, reflecting the painful awareness of a dual identity. Similarly, Amos’s painting uses
falling figures framed in African textiles to illustrate the displacement and rejection of Black
identity within a white hegemonic society. Through Freudian psychoanalysis, both texts unveil
unconscious desires to assimilate and the subsequent painful realization of the true self, marked
by alienation and anxiety. This essay examines how Díaz and Amos portray the interplay of double
consciousness, unconscious desires, and self-realization, highlighting the broader implications
of identity conflict for Black and other ethnic communities in America.
