The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Summary

In analyzing portrayals of women, it is appropriate to begin with the character of Margarita. For, within the text, she embodies the traditionally masculine traits of bravery, resilience, and violence as a means of liberating herself from an existence of abuse and victimhood. Even more, the woman plays upon stereotypes of femininity in order to mask her true nature. The reader witnesses this clever deception in a scene where the character endures a “wholesome thrashing” from her huge, violent, and grizzly bear-like husband, Guerra (81). Although Margarita “[submits] to the infliction with great apparent humility,” her husband is found “stone-dead” the next morning (81). Here, diction such as “submits” and “humility” relate to the traits of weakness, subservience and inferiority that are so commonly expected of women, especially in their relationships with men. Yet, when one

the Platano Curtain, he acted like it was his very own plantation, acted like he

It is not just the language of the Dominican culture that we find characters struggling to hold onto in Díaz’s Drown. We also find that the characters walk a fine line of defining themselves as newly Dominican American, and it seems they feel pressured to leave behind their old ways and traditions to join their new society. In the short story “Fiesta, 1980,” we find many examples of the family being torn between their Dominican customs and assimilating to their new American life. This story begins with the explanation of Papi’s most prized possession: a brand-new, lime-green, Volkswagen van. Much to Yunior’s chagrin (due to the fact that he gets sick every time he rides in the vehicle), this van means a lot to Papi, because to him, it represents an American family. According to John Riofrio (2008), “it[the van] is the embracing of the American way which has reenabled Papi’s masculinity,” (p. 33). After arriving at their Tia and Tio’s home for the party, Yunior sneers at his relatives’ apartment stating, “the place had been furnished in Contemporary Dominican Tacky” (p. 32). It seems as though Yunior, after only a short period in America, is already feeling embarrassed by his culture’s traditions. This chapter of the book also discusses the betrayal of Yunior’s father to his family, by having an affair with a Puerto Rican woman, whom

In the short story “How to date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” Junot Diaz

In “Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Transvestite in the New World” by Catalina de Erauso, a female-born transvestite conquers the Spanish World on her journey to disguise herself as a man and inflicts violence both on and off the battlefield. Catalina discovers her hidden role in society as she compares herself to her brothers advantage in life, as they are granted money and freedom in living their own lives. Erauso decides to take action of this act of inequality by forming a rebellion, as she pledges to threaten the social order.The gender roles allotted to both men and women in the Spanish world represent the significance of societal expectations in order to identify the importance of gender in determining one’s position in the social order in the Spanish World.

“FUKÚ” is an atavistic deadly curse that follows the De León family, and everything that can go wrong for them does. However, I believe that the fukú is only a consequence of their actions and a way for them to rationalize their misfortunes. The characters are using fukú as a crutch in place of taking responsibilities for their own actions. This is because they don’t want to accept the fact that things don’t always go the way they want them to. So they choose to blame the fukú for making their problems happen. So when fukú strikes a mongoose appears it comes as a character of a guardian angel with a sanguine presence. A mongoose is a weasel like animal that appears in the near death experiences of the characters. When it comes it shows a

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.

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the reader gets a sense of what the expectations are of Dominican men and women. Junot Díaz uses Oscar in contrast to the other male characters to present the expectations of the Dominican male. On the other hand, Díaz presents the women in the text, especially Belicia, La Inca, Lola, and Jenni, as strong characters in their own rights, but the male characters, with the exception of Oscar, have a desire to display their masculinity to maintain power over these women. It would be unfair to say that the women bring the abuse unto themselves, but rather it is their culture that makes the abuse acceptable and almost to a certain extent—expected.

Yunior represents the stereotypical Dominican male raised in the states, yet he battles with self-definition as he comes to terms with who he is on the inside as opposed to who he is purportedly supposed to be on the outside. According to the Dominican culture, males are the picture of masculinity, known for their womanizing ways. The central conflict within Yunior is his love for the Dominican social norm versus his love for the things in his life that represented nerdiness. Yunior lifted weights and ran to keep himself physically fit and was sexually promiscuous, at the same time, he enjoyed and engaged in nerdy banter with Oscar about science fiction genre, anime, fantasy and even writing. Yunior and Oscar share the same interests, which Yunior would never admit to anyone else, which is clear when Yunior says,

The ending of a novel can be evaluated by the reader in several different ways, however to properly analyze the work is to further explore the logic of how everything has come to be. The ability of the author to show the reader that the ending is reasonable from the preceding action and the character’s nature is what should truly be examined. Not only is the ending of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz both happy and unhappy, it is logical in the sense that it follows logically from the climax of the novel all while the character’s have been constant throughout, except Oscar. Oscar, the protagonist experiences a life-changing transformation that leads to his untimely death. However, the ending is convincing because of this

True masculine force goes back, in family stories from the Dominican Republic, with Trujillo's dictatorship shaping manhood perception in the Dominican culture. Oscar is incapable of rising to male-standard imposed by

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 familial expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

In a summary written by Out in SA, author John Green analyzes and explains why Sex as Political Condition is a book that will make you “read some passages aloud to your friends to make them laugh, and others to piss them off. Any book that can do both is worthwhile as they come.” This border novel is narrated by its protagonist, Honore, a former drug trafficker and a maracas enthusiast, who is afraid of dying in front of a TV like a pendejo. His fear of dying in front of a TV is so strong that it leads him to help out his friend Juan Sanchez Trusky (a.k.a. Trotsky), a war veteran, to try and “dispel his past and help a Guatemalan people’s revolt” or, in other words, help him “get off his ass and work for the greater good”. Comparatively, as

Después de Lucía (2012) is the second feature film written and directed by Mexico City native, Michel Franco. The film tells the story of Alejandra (Tessa Ia) and her father, Roberto (Hernán Mendoza) as they move from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City to start a new life (IMDb). The purpose of this essay is to examine how physical, sexual, psychological violence are directed toward women and the effects it has when not confronted. I will also analyze the value of having a woman’s narrative when focusing on women’s issue in the film Después de Lucía (2012).

Estrella Alfon’s “Magnificence” and Nick Joaquin’s “The Summer Solstice” are stories heavily focused on women going against the social roles and norms which in turn challenge patriarchy; thus, it is appropriate and fitting to use a feminist approach to analyze the said stories. Moreover, using a feminist criticism is more fitting since the female protagonists of the stories defy the socially constructed view of femininity and masculinity and in both stories, oppression or objectification of women is greatly exhibited. In order to unravel and comprehend the two stories, three questions will be tackled: (a) How is the relationship between men and women portrayed? (b) What are the power relationships between men and women? (c) How are male and female roles defined? “Magnificence” and “The Summer Solstice” are two stories which demonstrate