The Caribbean Culture

In Drown, women are simply perceived as objects. The Dominican Republic culture lets gender norms dictate behavior of both men and women, encouraging the practices of machismo. Machismo is defined as a strong sense of masculine pride. Diaz details Yunior’s journey in dealing with masculinity as well as the misogyny women face through the stories “Aurora” and “Edison, New Jersey”. Critics would argue Diaz should be assessed for the sexist portrayal of women in Drown. However, in Drown, Diaz acknowledges the deep misogyny within the Dominican Republic society; thus he cannot be criticized for the portrayal of women because he simply depicts a vivid reality.

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 country that I chose to conduct a culture analysis on is Jamaica. Jamaica is a third world country located in North America and the 3rd largest island in the Caribbean Sea. There is a 2.5 million population, which equally divided between urban and rural areas. The country runs approximately 146 miles long and varies between 21- 52 miles wide. The climate is tropical and its main tourist attraction is their beautiful beaches. The capital of Jamaica is Kingston, which has a population of more than 645,000. Kingston is the chief port of Jamaica and is along the southeastern coast of the island. It is covered by the “Blue Mountains”, which is thickly covered which tree ferns. The Blue Mountains experiences an average of 200 inches of rain annually, resulting in topsoil erosion and an abundance of streams. Peasants nurture coffee, usually grown on large plantations, in the valleys of the mountains. It is amongst the most expensive coffees in the world and is exported mainly to Japan.

One of the main sources of tension in How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, written by Julia Alvarez, are the sisters search for a personal identity among contrasting cultures. Many of the characters felt pressure from two sources, the patriarchal culture that promotes traditional gender roles and society of nineteen-sixties and seventies America. Dominican tradition heavily enforces the patriarchal family and leaves little room for female empowerment or individuality, whereas in the United States, the sixties and seventies were times of increasingly liberal views and a rise in feminist ideals. This conflict shaped the identities of the characters in Alvarez’s novel and often tore the characters apart for one another.

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.

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.

The culture of Haiti is a various mix of African and European elements due to the French colonization of Saint Dominguez. I chose to research this culture for two reason one reason being that I have a friend who is Haitian and I never understood why she did what she did, or even her mother. The second reason is because many people in Haiti is associated with voodoo, and that’s something I personally wouldn’t get to involved with due to my religious views. Throughout this essay we will see in detail the differences in culture from ours to theirs. We will learn about their primary language, religion, their different values and beliefs and last but not least their social practices. While reading on Haiti I started to appreciate their culture more due to the fact that know.

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

Over several years gender roles have been present in our daily lives. Society has preconceived judgments on what role each gender should play and when it is ok to go against societal norms. Although as the years continue to progress and societal norms begin to change, one thing that has remained the same is the gender role stigma. Gender roles have been instilled within us even before we exit our mother’s womb, from the color the newborns room is painted in down to the color clothes they wear. Plenty of research has been conducted on gender roles in Western culture. Some of the components researchers looked for were, what gender roles are, how they affect society and the individual along with the culture and history behind where it began (Cobb, R. A., Walsh, C. E., & Priest, J. B. (2009). While researching gender roles and different cultures I could not help but notice there were little to no research on gender roles within the Caribbean culture. This gap of literature helped me pose the question why is there plenty of research on gender roles in Western culture, but a scarce amount of research on gender roles in the Caribbean culture? Along with, how will we be able to eliminate or shift societal norms of what gender roles should be? It is important to touch on what gender roles are like in the Caribbean culture because then we can compare and contrasts how gender roles are displayed within various cultures and ultimately come up with a solution or suggestions on how to

Sexuality in traditional Dominican culture dominates Diaz’s novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” The descriptions and experiences of the main characters in the novel, namely, Oscar, Lola, Beli and Yunior highlight the theme of sexuality in Dominican culture. Yunior is the hyper-masculine narrator who presents sexuality in terms of the power and expectation of Dominican masculinity (Asencio 108). He embodies the ‘el machismo’ masculinity stereotype prevalent in Dominican culture where men have high sex drive and the power to dominate women by controlling their sexuality through violence, coercion, and verbal aggression. Oscar contradicts this machismo power by appearing emasculated like a woman. This shows that women have lower social standing compared to men, even lower than that of weak men like Oscar in Dominican culture. Sexuality plays a central role in Diaz’s novel to illustrate the dominance of masculinity over women in Dominican culture.

Collectively, these literary images go to describe a young ethnic man, probably of Latin descent, who lives with his mother in a poverty stricken area. The careful recitation of instruction given to the younger man seems to demonstrate an intricate knowledge the narrators has accrued from both predecessors and experience. Singularly, this part of the story is very powerful in that it shows a young man having to hide who he is and where he comes from in an effort to seem appealing to women, and speaks volumes about the deception that both genders go through all in name of the chase.

As mentioned in the book Yunior’s family immigrated from the Dominican Republic, which affected Yunior’s future with cultural expectations and societal judgement. In the Dominican culture men are expected to be “masculine and breadwinners” (

Jamaica is a land of diverse cultures. It has a number of different racial ethnic groups .The largest group however is the blacks or Africans so 'Jamaica’s culture' is predominantly black. Interwoven is also the European culture which these blacks learnt from their former white slaves masters. You will find Indians living in Jamaica also. Many Indians came to Jamaica as indentured servants and stayed, they too have an input in the Jamaica’s culture.

The evolution of Caribbean Literature started centuries before the Europeans graced these shores and continues to develop today. Quite noticeably, it developed in a manner which transcended all language barriers and cultures. Today the languages of the Caribbean are rooted in that of the colonial powers - France, Britain, Spain and Holland - whose historical encounters are quite evident throughout the region. The cosmopolitan nature of the region's language and cultural diversity develop from the mixture of European languages with Native American languages (mainly the Caribs and Arawaks) in the formation of creoles and local patois (hybrid languages) and those of Africans brought to the Caribbean as

In reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, You can obviously notice Yunior the narrator is portrayed as a true Dominican male. It becomes evident that a large focus is put on both male and female roles and situations. Through these critical parts found all through this book, it winds up noticeably apparent that through the outrageous manly demeanor (machismo) is anticipated from men from the Dominican Republic, the ladies, thusly, are disrespected and unworthy are viewed as simply like a toy or object. Junot Diaz looks at his characters from a women point of view too, exploring the impact women have upon not only his life but also the men characters too. Through seeing how the Dominican culture impacts the characters in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, it enables one to completely comprehend the thought processes and activities of the characters all through this book.