1. Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to New Jersey as a child, growing up poor. He struggled to fit in as one of the only passionate readers in his neighborhood and school. 2. Diaz went on to earn degrees from Rutgers and Cornell, and now teaches creative writing at MIT. His first collection of short stories, Drown, was published in 1996 and his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. 3. Throughout his childhood and young adulthood, Diaz felt like an outsider both in his Dominican neighborhood and at his predominantly white

2. Junot Diaz was born on December 31, 1968, in
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and
immigrated to New Jersey in 1974. He was a
voracious reader as a kid and recalls being one of
the only passionate readers in his neighborhood.

3. Diaz on his childhood: “I grew up super-poor, welfare,
section 8 and food stamps all the way, in a community
where us boys worried all the time about getting
jumped and where mad people got recruited by the
military. My mother was raising five kids on an income
that didn’t break ten grand a couple years.”

4.  Majoring in English,
Diaz completed his
BA at Rutgers in 1992
and his MFA at
Cornell in 1995.
 Diaz currently teaches
creative writing at
M.I.T. and is the
fiction editor for the
Boston Review.
 Drown, his first
collection of short
stories, was published
in 1996.
 The Brief Wondrous
Life of Oscar Wao
(2007) won the
Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction in 2008.

5. “I had never met anyone like myself in my
neighborhood,” says Díaz. “I was one of the only
readers.” At Cedar Ridge High School, Díaz ended up
in honors classes (“whiter than the Swiss volleyball
team”), but he was an outsider. “Not only was I with
predominantly white kids, but predominantly wealthy
white kids,” he notes. “The gulfs were interstellar.”

6. “Rutgers, honestly, it
was like a wonderland
for me, like going from
the black and white of
Kansas to the
Technicolor of Oz. I
had never been around
the density of so many
smart, beautiful
people.”

7. “I felt like I had been orphaned from my people, and I
had finally found where I belonged. It was just
extraordinary. My life changed—just changed. It was
just beautiful... When I got to Rutgers, it was the first
time I felt safe since I left the Dominican Republic. A
moment like that is hard to forget.”

8.  A nod to Ernest Hemingway’s short story ”The Short
Happy Life of Francis Macomber"
 Quote: “Of what import are brief, nameless lives…to
Galactus??” (Fantastic Four)
 Irish writer Oscar Wilde: Oscar’s Dr. Who Halloween
costume earns him the nickname Oscar Wao for the
costume's resemblance to playwright Oscar Wilde
(“Wao” a slurred, Dominican spin on the surname).

9. Dr. Who Oscar Wilde

10.  Coming of age story (bildungsroman)?
 Magical realism?
 Immigrant fiction?
 Historical fiction?
 Quest literature?
 Comedy?
 Tragedy?
 Epic?
 Or a collage – a volatile and combustible mash up –
a mix tape of real, unreal, past, present, comedy, and
tragedy ?

11.  The novel begins with a quote by Derek Walcott:
“I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, and either
I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.”

12. Part 1
 Chapter 1: GhettoNerd at the End of the World (1974-1987) - Oscar
Wao
 Chapter 2: Wildwood (1982-1985) - Lola
 Chapter 3: The Three Heartbreaks of Belicia Cabral (1955-1962) -
Hypatia "Belicia" Cabral
 Chapter 4: Sentimental Education (1988-1992) - Oscar Wao and
Yunior
Part 2
 Chapter 5: Poor Abelard (1944-1946) - Abelard Luis Cabral
 Chapter 6: Land of the Lost (1992-1995) - Oscar Wao
Part 3
 Chapter 7: The Final Voyage - Oscar Wao
 Chapter 8: The End of the Story - Oscar Wao and Yunior

13. The reader never meets Oscar face-to-face; instead his
story emerges piece by piece from other sources.
Diaz says, “I felt like one of the biggest absences
was hiding in plain sight, which is that we actually
never meet directly the protagonist. The protagonist,
Oscar, is always filtered through this other narrator,
Yunior. Part of it was this desire to make Oscar
simultaneously present but also entirely invisible. It
was a strategy to talk a lot about how do you put a
story together from fragments and how you put a
story together from absences.”

14. Thoughts to consider:
 Is Yunior a trustworthy narrator? Where does he
get his information? What’s his motive in telling
Oscar’s story? Why do you think Diaz doesn’t
reveal Yunior’s exact name and role until mid-
way through the book?
 Is Diaz’s tale about Oscar? Or is it about Yunior?

15.  Though the book is based on Oscar and his
undeniable romanticism, the themes of family,
love, alienation, and violence underwrite every
action. Because of this, the plot intertwines past
and present, Middle Earth and the Third World,
the fantastic and brutal reality, the wondrous and
the brief.
 The book also weaves in a colonial history of the
Dominican Republic, with all the violence and
oppression of Trujillo.

16.  Love
 Family
 Fantasy
 Wondrous
 Present
 Third World
• Violence
• Alienation
• Brutal reality
• Brief
• Past
• Middle Earth

17.  Science fiction: e.g., Isaac Asimov
 Fantasy: e.g., Lord of the Rings
 Comic books: e.g., Spider Man
 Literary figures: e.g., Oscar Wilde
 Literary works: e.g., Invisible Man
 Pop Culture: e.g., Dr. No, Land of the Lost
 Dominican History: e.g., Trajillo

18. bachatero
musician, more specifically: "A singer and/or songwriter of bachata
(a Dominican form of guitar-backed crooning); given the nature of
the genre, virtuosity in the genre would require both pipes and a
certain heart-throb charisma."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachata_(music)
perrito
a kind of popular dance. Someone sent this to me: "Baile del Perrito
began and was popular in 1993. Diaz takes poetic license when he cites
it for an ealier period; it displays such eroticism that he just had to
incorporate it. The girl does a grind with butt up in the air while the boy
makes repeated pelvic thrusts near her behind, much more prononced
than in reggaton of today."
María Montez {Maria}
María Montez (June 6, 1912 - September 7, 1951) was a Dominican-born
motion picture actress who gained fame and popularity in the 1940s as
an exotic beauty starring in a series of filmed-in-Technicolor costume
adventure films. Her screen image was that of a hot-blooded Latin
seductress, dressed in fanciful costumes and sparkling jewels. She
became so identified with these adventure epics that she became known
as "The Queen of Technicolor."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montez
Captain Trips
Captain Trips is a fictional virus occurring in the Stephen King novel The
Stand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Trips

19. OLD
FAVS

24. NEW
FAVS

27. • SETTING: The story is set in two locales—New
Jersey and the Dominican Republic. This dual
setting captures how the characters always feel out
of place. The Dominican Republic is on the eastern
end of the island of Hispaniola, bordered by Haiti on
the west, and the North Atlantic Ocean and
Caribbean Sea on the north and south respectively.
• The Dominican Republic is approximately the size
of our country and, as of 2020, had a population of
approximately 10,8 million. The ethnic breakdown
of the population is 16% white, 11% black, and
73% mixed.

30.  Diaz’ first footnote of the novel alerts you to the
importance of the history lessons he is about to
impart, with evident sarcasm and a playful voice:
“For those of you who missed your mandatory
two seconds of Dominican history,” he begins,
“Trujillo, one of the twentieth century’s most
infamous dictators, ruled the Dominican Republic
between 1930 and 1961 with an implacable
ruthless brutality. A portly, sadistic, pig-eyed
mulatto who bleached his skin, wore platform
shoes, and had a fondness for Napoleon-era
Haberdashery…”

31.  Unlike the footnotes most of us are used to in history
texts, these are fast, hot and personal, in the voice of
Yunior.
 Yunior knows the dorkiest of sci-fi and Marvel comic
book references; "My shout-out to Jack Kirby aside,
it's hard as a Third-Worlder not to feel an affinity with
Uatu the Watcher."
 But he also quotes the post-colonial theorist Edouard
Glissant, gives sweat-drenched details of the bedrooms
and backseats of government officials and explains the
fuku.
 This curse is linked to the rotten luck of Oscar's family,
Trujillo, and even the Kennedy clan.

32. Scientific American, January 15, 2008
“Did Columbus Bring Syphilis to Europe?”
New research touts evidence as the strongest
to date that he did.

33. Rafael Trujillo

34.  Rafael Trujillo took over control of the
Dominican Republic in 1930, leaping swiftly
from leader of the armed forces to President in
the wake of a revolution and quickly emerging
as, in Diaz’s words, an almost supernatural
dictator. He was assassinated in 1961, snapping
a forty-year long streak with no democratic
elections.

35.  Dominican Republic — The CIA assassinates
Rafael Trujillo. Here is the car, a 1957
Oldsmobile.

36.  Diaz makes Dominican history central to the
book, almost a character itself. What do you
think the stream of history-related footnotes
running below the fictional narrative provides for
the reader?

37.  Whereas Modernism focused on central themes
and a united vision in a particular piece of
literature, Postmodernism sees human experience
as unstable, internally contradictory, ambiguous,
inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished,
fragmented, discontinuous, "jagged," with no one
specific reality possible. Therefore, it focuses on
a vision of a contradictory, fragmented,
ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged"
world.

38.  The standard immigrant story of escaping the Old World and
assimilating to the New World and its dominant culture:
 Eastern and central Europeans and Jews (late 1800s)
 Asian Americans (late 21st century)
 Sometimes called “model minorities” for conformity to American
economics.
 The minority narrative (African Americans, Native Americans)
is not an immigrant story of voluntary participation and
assimilation but of involuntary contact and exploitation, resisting
assimilation, and creating an identity more less separate from the
mainstream.
 The New World immigrant (Hispanic/Latino/and Afro-
Caribbean), which constitutes the largest wave of contemporary
immigration, combines immigrant and minority narratives,
voluntarily immigrating from the Caribbean/West Indies but often
with experiences of involuntary contact and exploitation by the
US in other countries, or identification with minorities through the
color code.

39.  Western civilization transfers symbolic values associated with
“light and dark”—e. g., good & evil, rational / irrational—to
people of light or dark complexions, with huge implications
for power, validity, sexuality, etc.
 Skin color matters as a marker of identity and difference in race,
class, etc…
 Dark & light or black & white have many shades between, but
descriptions are sensitive and change rapidly to avoid
stereotyping. For example: “half-breeds” become “biracial”
 In-between color traditionally symbolizes various hopes and fears
from both sides of a cultural divide.
 Another in-between variation is the shift of the United States from
a "White & Black nation” to a "Brown nation" defined by
growing Hispanic populations and intermarriage.

40.  Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas,
values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West,
Postmodernism rejects Western values and
beliefs as only a small part of the human
experience and often rejects such ideas, beliefs,
culture, and norms.

41.  Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound
truths of experience and life, Postmodernism is
suspicious of being "profound" because such
ideas are based on one particular Western value
systems.

42.  Whereas Modernism attempts to find depth and
interior meaning beneath the surface of objects
and events, Postmodernism prefers to dwell on
the exterior image and avoids drawing
conclusions or suggesting underlying meanings
associated with the interior of objects and events.

43.  Whereas Modernism focused on central themes
and a united vision in a particular piece of
literature, Postmodernism sees human experience
as unstable, internally contradictory, ambiguous,
inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished,
fragmented, discontinuous, "jagged," with no one
specific reality possible. Therefore, it focuses on
a vision of a contradictory, fragmented,
ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged"
world.

44.  Whereas Modern authors guide and control the
reader’s response to their work, the Postmodern
writer creates an "open" work in which the reader
must supply his own connections, work out
alternative meanings, and provide his own
(unguided) interpretation.

45.  Throughout the novel, Spanish words and phrases appear unaccompanied by their English
translations. What is the effect of this seamless blending of Spanish and English? How would the
novel have been different if Díaz had stopped to provide English translations at every turn? Why
does Díaz not italicize the Spanish words (the way foreign words are usually italicized in English-
language text)?
 2. The book centers on the story of Oscar and his family—and yet the majority of the book is
narrated by Yunior, who is not part of the family, and only plays a relatively minor role in the
events of the story. Yunior even calls himself “The Watcher,” underscoring his outsider status in
the story. What is the effect of having a relative outsider tell the story of Oscar and his family,
rather than having someone in the family tell it? And why do you think Díaz waits for so long at
the beginning of the book to reveal who the narrator is?
 3. Díaz, in the voice of the narrator, often employs footnotes to explain the history or context of a
certain passage or sentence in the main text. Why do you think he chose to convey historical
facts and anecdotes in footnote form? How would the novel have read differently if the content of
the footnotes had been integrated into the main text? What if the footnotes (and the information
in them) had been eliminated altogether?
 4. In many ways, Yunior and Oscar are polar opposites. While Yunior can get as many women
as he wants, he seems to have little capacity for fidelity or true love. Oscar, by contrast, holds
love above all else—and yet cannot find a girlfriend no matter how hard he tries. Is it fair to say
that Yunior is Oscar’s foil—underscoring everything Oscar is not—and vice versa? Or are they
actually more alike than they seem on the surface?

46.  5. The narrator says “Dominicans are Caribbean and therefore have an
extraordinary tolerance for extreme phenomena. How else could we have survived
what we survived?” (p. 149). What does he mean by that? Could Oscar’s obsession
with science fiction and the “speculative genres” be seen as a kind of extension of
his ancestors’ belief in “extreme phenomena”? Was that his method of coping?
 6. Yunior characterizes himself as a super macho, womanizing jock-type—and yet in
narrating the book, his writing is riddled with reference to nerdy topics like the
Fantastic Four and Lord of the Rings. In other words, there seems to be a schism
between Yunior the character and Yunior the writer. Why do you think that is? What
could Díaz be trying to say by making Yunior’s character so seemingly
contradictory?
 7. For Oscar, his obsession with fantasy and science fiction becomes isolating,
separating him from his peers so much so that he almost cannot communicate with
them—as if he speaks a different language (and at one point he actually speaks in
Elvish). How are other characters in the book—for instance, Belicia growing up in
the Dominican Republic, or Abelard under the dictatorship of Trujillo, similarly
isolated? And how are their forms of isolation different?

47.  8. We know from the start that Oscar is destined to die in the course of the book—the title suggests as much,
and there are references to his death throughout the book (“Mister. Later [Lola would] want to put that on his
gravestone but no one would let her, not even me.” (p. 36)). Why do you think Díaz chose to reveal this from the
start? How does Díaz manage to create suspense and hold the reader’s attention even though we already know
the final outcome for Oscar? Did it actually make the book more suspenseful, knowing that Oscar was going to
die?
 10. In one of the footnotes the narrator posits that writers and dictators are not simply natural antagonists, as
Salman Rushdie has said, but are actually in competition with one another because they are essentially in the
same business (p. 97). What does he mean by that? How can a writer be a kind of dictator? Is the telling of a
story somehow inherently tyrannical? Do you think Díaz actually believes that he is in some way comparable to
Trujillo? If so, does Díaz try to avoid or subvert that in any way?
 11. The author, the primary narrator, and the protagonist of the book are all male, but some of the strongest
characters and voices in the book (La Inca, Belicia, Lola) are female. Who do you think makes the strongest,
boldest decisions in the book? Given the machismo and swagger of the narrative voice, how does the author
express the strength of the female characters? Do you think there is an intentional comment in the contrast
between that masculine voice and the strong female characters?
 12. There are a few chapters in the book in which Lola takes over the narration and tells her story in her own
words. Why do you think it is important to the novel to let Lola have a chance to speak for herself? Do you think
Díaz is as successful in creating a female narrative voice as he is the male one?

48.  13. While Oscar’s story is central to the novel, the book is not told in his voice, and
there are many chapters in which Oscar does not figure at all, and others in which
he only plays a fairly minor role. Who do you consider the true protagonist of the
novel? Oscar? Yunior? Belicia? The entire de Leon and Cabral family? The fukú?
 14. Oscar is very far from the traditional model of a “hero.” Other characters in the
book are more traditionally heroic, making bold decisions on behalf of others to
protect them—for instance, La Inca rescuing young Belicia, or Abelard trying to
protect his daughters. In the end, do you think Oscar is heroic or foolish? And are
those other characters—La Inca, Abelard—more or less heroic than Oscar?
 15. During the course of the book, many of the characters try to teach Oscar many
things—especially Yunior, who tries to teach him how to lose weight, how to attract
women, how to behave in social situations. Do any characters not try to teach Oscar
anything, and just accept him as who he is? How much does Oscar actually learn
from anyone? And in the end, what does Oscar teach Yunior, and the other
characters if anything?