Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz's novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is hard to read at first due to the Spanglish that is used. Oscar in my opinion, is immediately likeable. We find out that he was once a little Dominican stud and popular with the ladies when he was a boy--but that puberty hit and he turned into an overweight, nerdy, dungeons and dragons sci-fi loser. The thing is, the novel made me feel for Oscar. I actually felt sad and bad for him as I read about his unfortunate experiences, his getting teased for various reasons, and his complete lack of sexual experience. The guy gets to high school and has never had any experience, never had a girlfriend, and all he wants is to "get some." (ultimately though, all he wants is acceptance and to be loved.) He is a nice guy but is just so unmotivated to implement change to his life. In a way, Oscar reminds me of Edwin from Happiness. Edwin suffers through his daily life unhappy (and is sort of a nerd) and Oscar does the same. Lola, (Oscar's sister) reminds me of Jane from My Year of Meats because she is tough and goes against the norms/way she is "supposed" to be. She is a submissive female character, but more of a fighter. I cannot say that I can really relate to either Oscar or Lola but I suppose we all have the potential to at certain points in our lives. We all have times where we feel down or like a "loser" when things don't go our way. (unfortunately things NEVER go Oscar's way) Hopefully most of us stand up for what we believe in and don't take crap from people (like Lola) so in these ways, I think that anyone can relate to the characters. There are extremely prevalent cultural barriers that are erected in this novel--one being the Spanglish. Perhaps we are supposed to feel uncomfortable due to this though because we are not part of the Dominican culture. If we were, we would read the book entierely differently. If we knew what people were saying at certain points, we would look at it and go "oh, that's sad" and read on--not perplexed by thoughts of "what the heck is going on here?" I think that Diaz writes in a way that purposefully confuses us--because we should be since the book essentially is a model of a cultural barrier. This might seem initially uncomfortable, but is easier to understand as we read on.