Review Of Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not a happy book. The Author, Junot Diaz, does a great job fooling the reader into believing the story is about the De Leon family, specifically Oscar who is an over weight nerd trying to find the love of his life, but due to a family “fuku” or curse Oscar is having a lot of trouble doing so. Instead, the story actually portrays the dark history of the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Upon reading the stories of Oscar’s relatives the reader feels a powerful message of fear and oppression due to the actions of the Trujillo regime. Even after the demise of

Diaz strategically uses Yunior to narrate a majority of the novel. Though Yunior’s identity as the narrrater was not revealed till almost the very end of the novel, Yunior gave a very descriptive and satirical version of the life of Oscar Wao. Yunior was Oscar’s roommate at Rutgers, the boyfriend of Oscar’s sister, Lola, and the reader

One thing the Gangster forgot to tell Beli is that he was married and the wife was Trujillo blood. Since Beli was so excited about the pregnancy, she was telling everyone about it and soon the news got to the palace and the Gangster wife was furious.

Oscar is the antithesis of his culture’s idea of manliness. In the beginning we meet an Oscar who is called “Porfirio Rubirosa” (21). Everyone is proud of the boy because this is exactly what he needs to be to be a Dominican man. Men from Dominican Republic, and perhaps Spanish Caribbean men, are expected to take care of their family especially their mothers and sisters, yet they are also expected to be “playboys” who have multiple women. as the first line of the story communicates, “Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly-bachetero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock” (21). Oscar is the type of man who women say they want; kind, sensitive, considerate, smart, and romantic. He truly want to find true

　　Natalie Diaz's debut collection, When My Brother Was An Aztec, is a book of poems that accounts Diaz's skills in imaginative and lyrical language. The collection explores her past in unexpected form and images, tackling the subjects of her family, most notably her meth addicted brother, life on the reservation, and being a Native American woman. In this collection Diaz has filled the pages with rich and interesting images that rely on Native American culture, experiences of her own as a Native American woman, and mythology. As I read this collection I was struck by how heavy her images rested on the page and yet how weightless they seemed to fly off.

When you see someone characterize someone else as a nerd, what do you generally think about this person, what if this same person is characterized as a geek? Most people generally hold a negative connotation with one of these titles, some see it as the geek and some see it as the nerds. Oscar De Leon and Yunior from Juinot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao can be classified as members of either of these groups in some ways. There are ways that they fit in and ways that they don’t but first, in order to see how Oscar and Yunior fit into the geek or nerd classifications or not the criteria must be defined.

One thing all human beings, have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and family expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

“Aguantando” means holding on. In the very first paragraph we see how important it is for the narrator, Yunior, to hold on to his father’s memory. Yunior lives with his mother (Mami), grandfather (Abuelo) and brother (Rafa). They live in a house where anything of value, including furniture, food, clothing and even Mami’s Bible is stained from a leaky roof. As a Hispanic male, believe me when I tell you there is nothing more sacred than Mami’s Bible in that home. Yet it is clear how important Papi’s pictures are because they’re always in a plastic sandwich bag to keep them dry. It’s also clear that Papi leaving was the

The conclusion of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is satisfying because the ending revolved around Oscar’s death, the separate stories of the novel now intertwined because of him. His transformation and new personality was ultimately the cause of his death, but in a sense it can be considered happy because it seems just right. Oscar becomes a new person and breaks free of his nerdy and rejected persona. Diaz seamlessly weaves the ending of Oscar Wao’s story and all the characters around him due to their natures and the preceding actions. The ending of this novel is convincing and logical because of Oscar’s new transformation which led him to do things which he would have not done before. These things that he did, most specifically pursuing a woman he should not have, led him to his death. Despite the morbid ending, it is not unreasonable; it is certainly logical and therefore satisfying to the

Oscar continued to teach at his old high school in New Jersey, sad and depressed everyday for three years, that is until his trip to Santo Domingo. Oscar forgot how much he had missed spending time in the Dominican. His mind was no longer filled to the brim with disappointment, stress and the feeling of being depressed. For the first time in a while, he saw beautiful

As it unfolds in "The Golden Age" section, Oscar is part of a Dominican-American family that lives in Paterson, New Jersey. As a child he is pushed forward to the opposite sex by his mother, which is very proud about his early signs of virility. This is seen as one of the standing characteristics of Dominican males. Further on, we watch the decline of Oscar's success with women as he gains weight and he deepens himself in literature and isolation. This is caused by Maritza's rejection which affected him profoundly.

It is obvious that machismo is an integral part of the Latin culture, particularly when Junot Diaz depicts Oscar’s lack of machismo. However, this differentiation helps Oscar on his path to self-discovery. Oscar is able to stand as an individual instead of blending into the masses. While most Dominican men are concerned with looking manly, Oscar focuses his attention on literature, an aspect of himself in which he is proud. Oscar also helps Yunior on his path to self-discovery by teaching him responsibility.

Oscar sees Ybon not as a person, but as a part of his dream lifestyle, a confirmation of the gender stereotypes that have impacted his view of women. For him, Ybon was “the Higher Power’s last ditch attempt to put him back on the proper path of Dominican male-itude” (ibid). Just like he has always hoped, Ybon seems to be a miracle in his life that will enable him to fulfill his Dominican masculine expectations, especially by considering it as ‘the Higher Power.’ Oscar asserts his fantasies about her and their relationship into their reality together. He actually suggests that “maybe we should get married…not joking…” (288).

After the first chapter of the novel, the audience is left seeking closure on the subject of Laura’s death. Because resolution is so anticipated, understanding the past is the key to illuminating the end. Not only is the reader awaiting the the closure that lies at the end of the novel, Laura is characterized as also seeking the truth behind what happened the night of her sister’s death

In Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, one crucial point in the novel is in its questioning of the well-known tension between writers and dictators. The narrator problematizes the conventional idea that tyrants and scribblers are natural antagonists by claiming that both “just know competition when they see it.... Like, after all, recognizes like” (Díaz, 97). The idea that writers and dictators share similarities is contradictory by itself; but, Díaz plays with this idea through his representation of the Historical Dominican Dictator Rafael Trujillo and characters such as Yunior. While the ties between these two political and creative powers can be made clear through observations of Díaz’s story, the same connection can also be made apparent in other works of art. Written by Hector Oesterheld and drawn by Francisco Lopez, The Eternaut is an Argentina graphic novel that revolves around the main character gaining the power of time travel through his survival of an incoming alien invasion. A subject of various interpretations, The Eternaut is often understood as a massive metaphor that criticizes the dictatorships and the political strifes of its time. This paper will analyze the paradoxical connection between writers and dictators introduced in Diaz’s novel; as well as, compare its connection to the political interpretations made in Oesterheld’s The Eternaut.