Comment on other Writers’ views on Diaz’ Short Story

Writing Assignment #2 requires you to comment on what other writers have said about a short story. Pick one of the stories. Use the quotes below here as major discussion points. The MLA citation is included with each quote.
Diaz
“Diaz has written a mock coming-of-age story. Young men from the world of the streets do not gain wisdom about intimacy in profound single moments. In Diaz’s world, young men are born into sexism and racism, and their growth as men is only an expansion of these limited views of women and society.” -Rodriguez, Enri. “Diaz and Intimacy.” Columbia Standard. Nov. 2013: 76.
“Diaz’s narrator is a deeply racist and sexist young man, and readers should be appalled by this glorification of young men as blowhard sexual predators.” -Charles, Victor. “Junot Diaz Faces His Downfall.” New Yorker. Apr. 2018: 99.
“Diaz’s short story illuminates a specific aspect in the complex world of poor Dominicans: machismo. All of the actions of the narrator can be linked to this damaging cultural tradition. Diaz does not celebrate or condone the narrator’s behavior. He wants us to feel these tendencies in a jarring first person view. It’s an honest telling, and while many Dominicans may find it offensive, many others will quickly recognize it.” -Fleming, Michelle. “Don’t Look Away: The Harrowing Truths of Junot Diaz.” Green River Review. Jan.-Feb. 2019: 3.
O’Connor
“The Misfit is a classic antihero. O’Connor wants us to be more afraid of the Grandmother than the cartoonish serial killer. He’s not believable. But the elderly white lady who drops her faith in crisis is somebody that we all recognize. Her death is unjust and violent in the human sense, but it’s just and righteous in a spiritual sense.” -Longtree, Edith. “The Good Misfit.” The New York Times Magazine. March 17 1981: 46.
“O’Connor’s grandmother is a blatant symbol of the bygone and bigoted old South, embodied by her concern about ‘looking like a lady’ if and when she dies in a ditch. O’Connor story is about the death of the ‘Old South.’ When the dignified, racist, and anachronistic grandmother is shot, it’s the end of the South’s old ways. The modern world, however, is no better. The symbol of the modern world is even worse: a murderer, an agnostic, and nut-job: the Misfit.” -Bloom, Harold. “Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find.’” The Fifty Best Short Stories in the World. London: Penguin Books, 1990.
“There is no ‘good’ in ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find.’ O’Connor’s revered story about a family murdered on a country rood is a bitter condemnation of Southern life, which she believes is falling apart because of a new god-less era. Every character in the story is a cartoon, devoid of humanity, dignity, and spirituality.” -Grimsley, Max. “O’Connor’s Blood-Soaked South.” The Atlantic. Nov. 1970: 16.