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Summary Of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

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Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao explores the lasting effects of colonial violence on a people through the engagement with toxic masculinity and gender violence. The novel skillfully interweaves historical facts with narrative prose in order to draw a connection to an original source of colonial violence to explain its lasting negative effects on the people of the Dominican Republic. The ramifications of the association of a people with the land they inhabit as a means of dehumanizing leads to a snowball effect of a continued search for power from men through violence towards women among a colonized people. Meaning, colonial violence becomes gendered violence when operating within a patriarchal society. Furthermore, the connection …show more content…

The loss of power within the colonized/colonizer relationship creates a need for men within a patriarchal power structure to find power elsewhere. Being a typical Dominican man then, effects the ways the characters think about masculinity as the national identity becomes intertwined with gender. When talking of Oscar, Yunior says, “[He] [h]ad none of the Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldn’t have pulled a girl if his life depended on it. Couldn’t play sports for shit…had no knack for music or business or dance, no hustle, no rap, no G. And most damning of all: no looks” (Diaz 19). Good looks, ability to get women, athleticism, rhythmic abilities, and business acumen are then characteristics associated with masculinity. As Melissa Gonzalez states in “‘The Only Way Out Is In’: Power, Race, and Sexuality Under Capitalism in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” “There is no law passed stating that masculinity must be violent and hypersexual in order to be successful; rather, such socially ingrained attitudes are the productive, creative residues of power as it has been deployed in the Dominican Republic and its diaspora” (281). The violent state of masculinity is productive because people fear it and obey it rather than risk being hurt because of it. With the ability of the Trujillo regime to cement a strong identity of masculinity means that a future generation will always contain a residual aspect of these core values. Due to the fact that this type of masculinity is continually rewarded, the identity continues and thus within a patriarchal society, the ramifications of the dehumanization of a colonized people snowballs into a search for power and a rewarding of exaggerated forms of masculine prowess seen through Trujillo regime. Socially engrained attitudes become the most difficult attitudes to overcome as they

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