The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Stereotypes

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a novel written by the Dominican author Junot Diaz. The novel jumps from time to time and from character to character; the time varying between 1955 and 1995. That is why the historical context of each part of the story is different, but they all have one thing in common. Historically, Latin culture has been known for its patriarchy and machismo; these attitudes create stereotypes and gender norms that affect how people think, speak and act. These rules define the goals and the pursuit of happiness of every individual, molding them from being misfits to becoming the picture-perfect version of the stereotype. In this case, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a novel about a Dominican family, narrated

The Gangster was a man she met on a club. From the first encounter, he was already harassing her. When he offered to buy her a drink and “she turned away como una ruda, he grabbed her arm, hard,” (Díaz, 2007) and asked where she was going. Hypatia Belicia Cabral may have acted all upset, but that simple act remained in her mind; that is why she went to the club a second time, to see him. From there on, things only went downwards. The grown-up man, saw the 14-year-old girl as a sexual object, “what he wanted was to suck Beli’s enormous breasts, to fuck her pussy until it was a mango-juice swamp…” (Díaz, 2007) while Beli saw him as her boyfriend because “…he made her feel guapa and wanted and safe…” (Díaz, 2007). But, how safe can you feel with a married man who threatens you while waving a pistol and screaming “…hija de la gran puta would you stop jodiéndome!” (Díaz, 2007)? Sadalla et al. (1999) explain that women are usually more attracted to dominant men because of the social norm, thus “men in our society generally are expected to act dominant.” Because of that same dominant behavior in The Gangster, his wife threats towards her and the matones looking for her, fukú got to her forcing her to join the

Although he was not violent, he was unfaithful with the love of his life without any remorse. This caused Lola, the only one who matured and decided to move on from the lifestyle after the atrocious intent of escape from her family, to terminate her relationship with him. The peculiarity about the narrator is that he fights for her and tries to do the right thing, but as soon as he has the chance he cheats on her. Thus, his so called fukú can be summarized as the inability to do the right thing and keeping his Dominican machista culture