Stereotypes In The Brief And Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Stereotypes became the definition of one’s own identity based on their background as well as abilities compared to other similar to them. There are many stereotypes that goes around the world such as black people being natural violent, every Asian people are supposed to be smart at science and math; or even that everyone that live in the projects are ghetto, so it’s best to avoid them. In Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the main protagonist of the novel, Oscar Wao, have been suffer from stereotypes all of his life, from the people of his hometown to the other Dominican kids within the United States. Since he is not the stereotypical definition of a Dominican as they say he is not handsome, big, and buff, everyone, ranging

Stereotypes have been broke down to different categories, such as racial stereotypes such as, “all black people are thieves, don’t trust them with handling money.” There are gender stereotypes such as, “Women are supposed to remain in the house, taking care all the kids and household chores while men are supposed to be bread-maker in the family.” There are even age-related stereotypes such as, “if you haven’t had sex yet by the time your 21, you are not considered to be a men among your peers.” In Diaz’s Life of Oscar Wao, there is a lot of gender and racial stereotypes like “You’re not dominican, if you can get a girl to have sex with you, or you’re not from the Caribbean because you don’t how to play dominos or football (soccer). Many psychologists believed that stereotypes were created because in order for them to identify themselves they overlap and compared their culture with other cultures. This led to realization of social cognition, the way society thinks as a whole and as individuals. Society, in a sense that for people to know who they are, and to feel better about themselves, they have to be compared to those around them. For example, in Diaz’s Life Oscar Wao, Oscar compared himself to his college roommate Yunior a lot, feeling ashamed and disgusted of his image, he attempted to change it, to make himself more similar to Yunior. In this sense, Oscar had stereotyped himself as he knows he doesn’t look like the way other dominicans looked, and attempts to change himself, hoping he can be more like Yunior, a carefree, smooth talking, masculine dominican. The identity that he tries to established for himself, is his way of trying to be somebody, because for people to respect him, or even to notice him on the first glance, he wants to be somebody they already