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Identify the most important ideas that surface from the discussion
In my opinion the idea we discussed that is more important is Lola's personality. The fact she stay truth to herself and had such a strong personality in such a toxic masculinity culture and household is indeed admirable. Women are always supposed to have a docile personality and men are supposed to be the strong ones, however in this case Lola is the strong one and Oscar has a more fragile personality.
What was your role in the discussion?
I helped interpret quotes and give my opinion and perspective. Also we all gave feedback to each other.
What can you take from the discussion? Did it open any new interpretations about the text?
What I took from the discussion is each person has a very different opinion and interpretation of the book, even though we all got to the same conclusion or agree in certain things the different members of the group had their own reasons why. For example we all agreed Oscar was struggling a lot because he wanted to fill the shoes of a Dominican man. I thought that Oscar had succumbed due to the pressure his family had put on him from a very young age and was unable to keep the standard he was ask to have, while another member thought growing up he tried to fit into the American culture while trying to still be in the Dominican one as well and ended up failing in both.

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Identify the most important ideas that surfaced from the discussion
In the discussion we had, several important ideas such as the concept of hypermasculinity being presented in the text, xenophobia being a problem in Oscar's society and still sometimes in ours nowadays, and the objectification of women were discussed.

What was your role in the discussion?
During the discussion, I was the Discussion Director. I had a more passive role as I tried to listen to the ideas and answers the other team members had in reference to my questions.

What can you take from the discussion?
From the discussion, I learned how similar our team ideas were and that we have similar ways of perceiving the text. We got to the conclusion that probably the reason why this author wrote this book was to spread awareness about the discrimination and social inequality at that time, and how surprised we were on the way women at that time normalized gender inequality and accepted it without feeling the need for the situation to change. Talking to the other team members and listening to the answers they gave to the questions I wrote also made me think about things I haven't considered before like for example the way Spanish language could also represent hypermasculinity in the text.

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As the explanations after the quotes say, we discussed about how the author uses a type of language which ends up excluding different types of people on certain occassions, how he used footnotes only when referring to dominican culture, how his information was probably biased, how Dominican culture encourages hypermasculinity, how Dominicans tend to exclude other cultures such as Puerto ricans and how Oscar was excluded because of his lack of shared characteristics with the stereotypes about Dominican men

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Identify the most important ideas that surfaced from the discussion
The most important topic was racism. How does it make Dominican men feel more powerful over women and the need they have to insult and treat them like as if they hadn't felt. We also talked about Lola, Oscar's sister, and how she has a strong character that contrasts with all the sexism.

What was your role in the discussion?
I was in charge of the luminary quotes and presented to my classmates the quotes I believed had great meaning and were topics of discussion.

What can you take from the discussion?
The most I take from the discussion is Lola's character, I really liked how she went against what people expect from you, she just lives her life as she wants and that is admirable.

Did the discussion open any new interpretations of the text?
It made me think about how much do I let other people's opinions affect my actions, and how many things I have decided not to do because of fear of what others might say.

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I was the researcher and I actively participated in the discussion.

One of the things that I believe to be the most important from the long discussion we had on the luminary section, was that every quote showed Dominican societies standards and stereotypes, and how that affected Oscar who felt he did not fit in. We analysed these quotes and try to think about what they represented to us, what they showed, and the message behind them. It also pinpoints on the fact that the same group of themes appear over and over again throughout the first chapter: hypermasculinity, Dominican culture and sexism. This makes it clearer that the author is trying to spread awareness about this issue by showing the consequences of such themes.

The discussion did not open up many new interpretations about the text as we had already talked about similar things in past discussions. Nevertheless, as I said before, the discussion did make it clear what the author's intentions were by portraying the different themes and we could perceive how people can be affected by them and thus, spreading awareness about it.

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Identify the most important ideas that surfaced from the discussion
We discussed about Lola, Oscar's sisters, who plays an important role in the book for strong personality. This shows a contrast with Dominican men, since they believe they are supposed to be the ones with strong character and expect women to have a delicate personality.
What was your role in the discussion?
I contributed by giving my personal opinon and helping interpret the quotes chosen and what they were trying to express.
What can you take from the discussion? Did it open any new interpretations about the text?
This discussion helped me understand more aspects of the Dominican culture and stereotypes in it, which open the possibilities to interpret the book from another perspective. For example, besides from Oscar's family were women have a strong character, most Dominican women such as Maritza try to act all girly to attract male attention.

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What was your role in the discussion?
I was the summarizer

What can you take from the discussion?
I found it interesting how the most substantial quotes for Avril, the luminary, were about sexism and discrimination. I think this says a lot about her position towards the book and how she feels by reading about gender injustices in the world. That made me wonder if her context, a sexist country with hundreds of abusive cases towards woman, have influenced the meaning she was towards hypermasculitnity.

Did the discussion open any new interpretations about the text?

With her extraction of quotes, I can further understand why Oscar felt depressed about his life and why he used science fiction to feel comfortable in a world which is not full of prejudices and stereotypes, where you can be whoever you want to be. As I mentioned before, we also got to understand about the extreme discrimination cases of woman, girls that acted as society normed but were partners with abusive people. Maritza, for instance, got away from a relationship with Oscar, an aggressive person, to be with men that constantly hit her, “

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1. Identify the most important ideas that surfaced from the discussion

The most important idea that surfaced were inequality, in every sense. For example stereotypes being really normalised, people treating women badly but not many people giving much care about it and the whole meaning of him being puertorican but being different because of regular things (because he dint like certain things boys at his age liked). Since men were basically known for their multiple women and not caring about certain aspects of mariage. He basically was an outcast and everyone made him conscious of that every time they could.

1. What was your role in the discussion? Did you participate actively or passively?

Actively, since i gave a few ideas about certain stereotypes and inequality.

1. What can you take from the discussion? Did the discussion open any new interpretations about the text for you?

I took a lot of new interpretations about this text after the discussion since everyone gave different ideas and their point of views in some things I didn't even notice or pay attention to while i read the book. Some points made were also really accurate to that i thought about certain things.

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After reading the quotes we came to the realization of the ideas that were integrated in these bits of texts. We observed that the Dominican society in this book was very biased and racist in many ways as the text provides us with the different parts where these characters clearly show that kind of behavior. My role was to understand and take in all the information given to all the group through the quotes. These quotes helped me to understand why people had different views on this type of theme and why it was so important to discuss it. In general the quotes helped me to understand how people see the book differently.

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The topics touched are hypermasculinuty, importance of Dominican history, identity, culture. This help us understand the context of the story and the characters in a deeper level. In this case as I did the quotes I (mara)participated very actively in the discussion. The new interpretations we came up with are included within the discussions.

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What was your role in the discussion ?
I was the luminary, I read the quotes and explained my interpretations of these.

What can you take from the discussion?
The discussion helped me have more clear the themes of the book; Dominican culture, racism, sexism, society and stereotypes. The quotes also made me remember important parts of the book that help me understand in a deeper level the book. By analyzing the quotes I can see the purpose of the author and comprehend the characters more profoundly.
Did the discussion open any new interpretations about the text?
Because I was the luminary and they were my interpretations I don't think I have new interpretations. However, I have improved my own interpretations and took them to a more analytic and deeper level.

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1. Identify the most important ideas that surfaced from the discussion
2. What was your role in the discussion? Did you participate actively or passively?
3. What can you take from the discussion? Did the discussion open any new interpretations about the text for you?

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Identify the most important ideas that surfaced from the discussion
The most important ideas were racism and sexism. More in depth, how little kids  (specially boys) are expected to act a certain way = "masculine". (toxic masculinity). This is not only in Oscar's culture but globally a prevalent topic.

What was your role in the discussion?
I helped discussing interpretations based on the quotes and how we can relate them to the main ideas Alessia took from the book.

What can you take from the discussion?
The way the book represents dominican families and their culture (sexist). It might be true or might not. The text clearly states "but this is a dominican kid we're talking about..." and then proceeds to show the hypermasculinity nowadays.

Did the discussion open any new interpretations about the text?
Yes. My classmates perspectives were different to mine and by having a discussion, I was able to incorporate their views into mine and come up with new better interpretations.

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“For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history:”

Referred to everyone but Dominicans who do not know history (power imbalance of what we learn and what is forgotten). It's directed to Americans and intended to make them feel excluded or uncomfortable. Mocking tone. Introduction to the rest of the story.

Rubi was the original Dominican Player, fucked all sorts of women—Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke (who happened to be the richest woman in the world)

He gives large explicit footnotes regarding Dominican history. But when referencing science fiction they are not that extensive. The intention behind this was to give more significance to the cultural aspect and indirectly make Dominican history heard since in the dictatorship their voice was censored and shut.

Dale un galletazo, she panted, then see if the little puta respects you.

The mother encourages this behabour (exaggerated forms of masculinity) players, and is violent. Showing part of the culture traditions and acceptable behavior. Even women encouraged these types of violent behaviors and were used to it as well.

Maritza was allowed over their house and Olga was not. (A puertorican over here? his mother scoffed. Jamás!)

Love triangle (the girl he does not choose is Puerto rican but for racial reasons and purely physical purpose). Again, culture is shown how Dominicans view other cultures. Even though they were sometimes the ones marginalized, they did the same. As immigrants they want to feel power above some social group.

Maritza was a girl who seemed to delight in getting slapped around by her boyfriends

What she is used to it and maybe she will have a hard time changing or finding a healthy relationship (in this transition people tend to feel uncomfortable as they are used to toxic environments)

Everybody noticed his lack of game and because they were Dominican everybody talked about it.

He was excluded from his own culture which influenced his identity and self esteem. Watch that he is not adquiring this behavior not because he doesn't want but because he can't. (there are no girls and other boys regard him as weak)

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We discussed how the book portrayed racism and sexism, which we found to be the most important topics from what we've read till now.
In this disscussion my role was to select the quotes and then explain why I had chosen them and why did I thought they were good to use for discussion.
Thanks to this discussion I got see this quotes on new perspectives and get a better grip of what they were trying to tell us and how they affected my uderstanding of the story.
This discusion did help me get a nre interpretations of the text because I got to listen to the opinion an d thoughts of other people.

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Identify the most important ideas that surfaced from the discussion
We talked about how this book portrays racism and sexism. It has a lot of quotes which present this idea and how racist and sexist the Dominican society is.

What was your role in the discussion ?
I contributed by giving my opinion on the topic and also using my own personal understanding of the book to explain how sexist it is, for example, I talked about how men expected women to stay at home and cook.

What can you take from the discussion?
This discussion help me to understand more the book and its themes. It helped me understand how men view women in the book and how they looked at Dominican people in general.
Did the discussion open any new interpretations about the text?

This discussion helped me to understand what other people might comprehend from the book. Me and my partners can read a quote but we both can interpret it very differently.

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Alejandro, Kimi, Macarena and Mara

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Lucia, Luis, Avril, Rafaela

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Andrea, Brisa, Joaquin Q, Alessia, Camila

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Mikela,Belen,Joaquin,Astrid