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Question 1: Comment on how our narrator Yunior could be considered to be a dictator in terms of narration like trujillo?

Point - During the text we can see how Yunior decides to implement language to suggest that he might have a dictator mindset by using relevant stereotypes during the novel, also including Dominican history facts to highlight and makes us understand so we can understand his view even better.

Basically Yunior decides whether to include parts of the story making it likely to be biased towards how he thinks. With whatever references he uses or how the footnotes are introduced he can choose our way of understanding of what’s happening and how we may feel towards certain characters.

By providing footnotes he limits the reader from research more than they should; this could be comparable to a pagina blanca where Trujillo wanted everyone to see how he himself saw everything.

Evidence

“Trujillo, one of the twentieth century’s most infamous dictators”. This quote is part of the first footnote we get introduced to in the text. It immediately suggests to us that Trujillo was someone horrible. History most of the time is known as something subjective, based on opinion, and is mostly likely biased. In this case Yunior’s footnotes only are present when it comes to explaining Dominican history. Usually when we see an important reference we research it, but Yunior includes footnotes on these history references which makes us feel like we don’t really need to research much more after reading the footnote.

Explanation

This all basically seems like Yunior wants to dictate us into only having an understanding of Dominican history based on the, most likely biased, information he is giving us. He could be considered as someone who’s a dictator in terms of narration when it comes to ‘dictating’ us into only researching the references he decides and base our opinion on different parts of the texts on the information we’re given by him.

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Examine the way Oscar Wao offers multiple perspectives on the issue of gender?

The author manages to shows many different perspectives regarding how women and men are being treated, all contradicting one another as this book is both sexist and feminist.

"he had drowned on Semana Santa and she never remarried, never touched another man." "I know I should, but I can't. I love him."

Women are portrayed as being weak and easy to manipulate by men. This represents how some women are most likely to fall in love quickly and allow any kind of abuse.

"He had secret loves all over town, the kind of curly-haired big-bodied girls who wouldn't have said boo to a loser like him..."

Here they talk about Oscar and how he is not the usual Dominican macho stereotype. He does actually use his emotions and has a big conscience.

"If a bog hit me, Lola said cockily, I would bite his face."

Lola is a pure strong female character. These demonstrations are the reason why this book is considered a feminist book. It projects women as people with their own values who can take care of themselves, and not only that, but they also are very intelligent and mature.

"Tío Rudolfo had four kids with three different women so the ... was without doubt the family's resident metéselo expert."

On the other hand, this is the reason why the book could also be a sexist book but presented in a way so that it is obvious and noticeable to readers. Rudolfo is the representation of a Dominican man at his highest, with no interest at all about how women might feel, he only focuses on taking more power for himself.

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Discuss how intertextuality in the text is connected to the theme of being marginalized?

Oscar Wao is filled with references from Spanish words and Dominican culture to movies and books. What they all have in common is that most people don't know a thing about what they are so the author gives them two choices. For readers to search for the meaning and have a better understatement of it, or just ignore it as if it wasn't even there in the first place. Junot put these references to make people feel like there is still so much they don't know about, to incentive them to amplify the knowledge but in the end, it is the reader's choice.

"For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history"
Here the author is about to explain something about Dominican culture and highlights how most people don't pay attention to things they think won't matter, but the more you know, the more you are able to connect things.

"...where my singing would inspire a remake of The Sound of Music"
If you haven't watched 'The Sound of Music' you are probably going to be confused about whether is a song or a movie or a book. (it is a movie musical)

"... he was gorging himself on a steady stream of Lovecraft, Wells, Burroughs, Howard, Alexander, Herbert, Asimov, Bova, and Heinlein"
All of these people were writers and Oscar admired but if we didn't research the names, most likely, we would have never guessed correctly.

"Could write in Elvish, could speak Chakobs"
This is one of the languages used in 'The Lord of the Rings' a novel and film. If you have never watched the movie or read the book, you could even think that was a real language.

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In the book, Oscar is marginalized because he doesn’t follow the stereotype for Dominican men to be aggressive, very strong and attractive to women, “He was crying… Look at the mariconcito, somebody snickered”. In this quote, the author uses alliteration to emphasize that people judged Oscar for being emotional and not “masculine” enough. Because Oscar didn’t like to be aggressive, his confidence was destroyed, and he started to gain weight. He was not someone attractive for many women, and stayed in the friend-zone with Ana. He was even discriminated against by his best friends for not looking like other dominicans. As a reader, we feel empathy for him, someone who lacked “Atomic Level G” and was judged by all of his teenage years, even his mother “you certainly don’t take after me”. However, we can have mixed feelings about his aggressiveness created by love. If he was so peaceful and calm, why did he plan on shooting Manny? In my opinion, he needs to find himself and get to know his abilities and flaws. When he does this, no comment nor tag will prejudice his state.

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In Chapter 1 of the book “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” we can see how Oscar is marginalized with the Dominican community, the United States people and ideal DR men stereotype.

“His interest—in Genres!—which nobody had said boo about before, suddenly became synonymous with being a loser with a capital L”. During his teenage years, Oscar was really into science fiction, not the particular interest of the boys his age, who were focused on girls, dating and all those things.He had few friends because almost nobody understood the love he had for science fiction. But it was more than that, as it is like his safe space where he can be himself and can explore the territory of love, as he thinks it is not possible for him to experience that in real life. He has so much happening in his life so he could be expected to be aggressive and hateful, but it is really his science fiction where he really belongs and saves him.At some point, his friends started growing and getting more interested in girls, and he started feeling like he didn't belong there anymore as he felt very different from them. He felt marginalized from his own friends.

"The white kids looked at his black skin and his afro and treated him with inhuman cheeriness. The kids of color, upon hearing him speak and seeing him move his body, shook their heads. You're not Dominican. And he said, over and over again, But I am. Soy dominicano. Dominicano soy". Oscar didn’t feel identified and included in any community as he wasn’t white nor Dominican enough. According to the white kids in his school Oscar didn’t fit with them as his skin was too dark and had an afro; they treated him differently because of his looks.However, the kids with color didn’t accept him either as they claimed that Oscar wasn’t Dominican (because of the way he spoke and moved his body; he didn’t meet the ‘Dominican standards’. But what are the Dominican standards? Wasn’t the fact that Oscar was born in DR and had a Dominican family enough for him to be considered Dominican? Probably not (because of the DR men stereotype)

In the book, Oscar is marginalized because he doesn’t follow the stereotype for Dominican men to be aggressive, very strong and attractive to women, “He was crying… Look at the mariconcito, somebody snickered”. In this quote, the author uses alliteration to emphasize that people judged Oscar for being emotional and not “masculine” enough. Because Oscar didn’t like to be aggressive, his confidence was destroyed, and he started to gain weight. He was not someone attractive for many women, and stayed in the friend-zone with Ana. He was even discriminated against by his best friends for not looking like other dominicans. As a reader, we feel empathy for him, someone who lacked “Atomic Level G” and was judged by all of his teenage years, even his mother “you certainly don’t take after me”. However, we can have mixed feelings about his aggressiveness created by love. If he was so peaceful and calm, why did he plan on shooting Manny? In my opinion, he needs to find himself and get to know his abilities and flaws. When he does this, no comment nor tag will prejudice his state.

In the book, Oscar is marginalized because he doesn’t follow the stereotype for Dominican men to be aggressive, very strong and attractive to women, “He was crying… Look at the mariconcito, somebody snickered”. In this quote, the author uses alliteration to emphasize that people judged Oscar for being emotional and not “masculine” enough. Because Oscar didn’t like to be aggressive, his confidence was destroyed, and he started to gain weight. He was not someone attractive for many women, and stayed in the friend-zone with Ana. He was even discriminated against by his best friends for not looking like other dominicans. As a reader, we feel empathy for him, someone who lacked “Atomic Level G” and was judged by all of his teenage years, even his mother “you certainly don’t take after me”. However, we can have mixed feelings about his aggressiveness created by love. If he was so peaceful and calm, why did he plan on shooting Manny? In my opinion, he needs to find himself and get to know his abilities and flaws. When he does this, no comment nor tag will prejudice his state.

In the book, Oscar is marginalized because he doesn’t follow the stereotype for Dominican men to be aggressive, very strong and attractive to women, “He was crying… Look at the mariconcito, somebody snickered”. In this quote, the author uses alliteration to emphasize that people judged Oscar for being emotional and not “masculine” enough. Because Oscar didn’t like to be aggressive, his confidence was destroyed, and he started to gain weight. He was not someone attractive for many women, and stayed in the friend-zone with Ana. He was even discriminated against by his best friends for not looking like other dominicans. As a reader, we feel empathy for him, someone who lacked “Atomic Level G” and was judged by all of his teenage years, even his mother “you certainly don’t take after me”. However, we can have mixed feelings about his aggressiveness created by love. If he was so peaceful and calm, why did he plan on shooting Manny? In my opinion, he needs to find himself and get to know his abilities and flaws. When he does this, no comment nor tag will prejudice his state.

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Quotes:
-  "What, these girls don’t have any other friends?
Al and Miggs traded glances over their character sheets. I don’t think so, dude."
- "He realized his fucked-up comic-book-reading, role-playing-game-loving, no-sports-playing friends were embarrassed by him. "
- "The white kids looked at his black skin and his afro and treated him with inhuman cheeriness. The kids of color, upon hearing him speak and seeing him move his body, shook their heads. You’re not Dominican. And he said, over and over again, But I am. Soy dominicano"

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- Oscar was marginalized because of his physique: he was fat an not atractive unlike any other Dominican boy
- Oscar was also marginalized because of his interests: he liked to read nerdy books, play nerdy games, etc.
- he wasn't popular with the girls and didn't have "game" like other dominican boys: this made him feel like he didn't fit in this society
- he was marginalized in university since he was left out by whites and dominicans for not being white or dominican enough.

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Avril, Maca, Mara, Alessia, Joaquin and Lucho

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Avril, Maca, Mara, Alessia, Joaquin and Lucho

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Discuss how intertextuality in the text is connected to the theme of being marginalized?

Intertextuality is present throughout the whole book. There are references to geek and nerd culture, different genres, movies, spanish words and dominican history. The author does not go further into explaining why he chose these references and what they mean in the context of the story. This way, he puts people like Americans who do not understand spanish, in a position where they cannot comprehend fully what the references mean. This is done to make the readers feel lost when they read the book and it also gives them the option to culturise themselves. Readers are excluded from the meaning of the book.

“Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his lightsaber…”

This basically tells us that he was a nerd and could be seen from miles away. So he was known to be a nerd and it was very obvious as he was proud of being a nerd.

“Could write in Elvish”

Elvish is one of the fictional languages used in the film and novel Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Rings is about a group of heroes who set forth to save their world from consummate evil

“¡Muchacho del diablo!”

By understanding what this phrase means lets us know the strong language and message delivery intent behind this.

“Look at that little macho”

Machos are basically people who are super strong and “masculine” in some sort of way. So if you tell someone he is a macho it's telling you he is a man or has manned up.

“the interest she showed in his Star Trek dolls.”

Due to this quote being from early in the book, it is implied that Oscar was as nerd from a very young age.

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Question 1: Comment on how our narrator Yunior could be considered to be a dictator in terms of narration like trujillo?

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Question 1: Comment on how our narrator Yunior could be considered to be a dictator in terms of narration like trujillo?

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Point - During the text we can see how Yunior decides to implement language to suggest that he might have a dictator mindset by using relevant stereotypes during the novel, also including Dominican history facts to highlight and makes us understand so we can understand his view even better.

Basically Yunior decides whether to include parts of the story making it likely to be biased towards how he thinks. With whatever references he uses or how the footnotes are introduced he can choose our way of understanding of what’s happening and how we may feel towards certain characters.

By providing footnotes he limits the reader from research more than they should; this could be comparable to a pagina blanca where Trujillo wanted everyone to see how he himself saw everything.

Evidence

“Trujillo, one of the twentieth century’s most infamous dictators”. This quote is part of the first footnote we get introduced to in the text. It immediately suggests to us that Trujillo was someone horrible. History most of the time is known as something subjective, based on opinion, and is mostly likely biased. In this case Yunior’s footnotes only are present when it comes to explaining Dominican history. Usually when we see an important reference we research it, but Yunior includes footnotes on these history references which makes us feel like we don’t really need to research much more after reading the footnote.

Explanation

This all basically seems like Yunior wants to dictate us into only having an understanding of Dominican history based on the, most likely biased, information he is giving us. He could be considered as someone who’s a dictator in terms of narration when it comes to ‘dictating’ us into only researching the references he decides and base our opinion on different parts of the texts on the information we’re given by him.

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Avril, Maca, Alessia, Lucho, Joaquin and Mara

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Avril, Maca, Alessia, Lucho, Joaquin and Mara

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“Dude never had much luck with the females (how very un-Dominican of him)”

Dominican Men are known for being womanizers, with a very masculine way of behaving, this is why Oscar is the odd one out and seen as “un-Dominican”, because he is different from the regular stereotype.

“When he had two little girlfriends at the same time”, “Look at that little macho, his mother’s friends said. Que hombre.”

This shows how men were supposed to be hypermasculine. Oscar was glorified when he had 2 girlfriends at a time as this was seen as an act of being alpha, macho, super masculine.

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

Women being abused and no one talking about it since it was so normalized. Even her mother told Oscar that he should hit the girl in order for her to respect him.

“Dominican kid we’re talking about, in a Dominican family: dude was sup- posed to have Atomic Level G, was supposed to be pulling in the bitches with both hands.”

Describing the Dominican culture, men are supposed to have a lot of women and it is okay for men to disrespect their wives or partners. It also shows how Dominican men were expected to have game and be good at talking with women, thus, having lots of women.

“Listen, palomo: you have to grab a muchacha, y meteselo. That will take care of everything.”

We can see how forcing women to do things without consent was also very normalized and older men taught younger men  to keep on doing these things. So basically these beliefs were taught from generation to generation, so the cycle will or could never end.

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How the context of production and reception create meaning.

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Explain how the setting influences the characters and reflects the authors own context?

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Explain how the setting influences the characters and reflects the authors own context?

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Explain: Give a detailed account including reasons or causes

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Discuss how intertextuality in the text is connected to the theme of being marginalized?

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Discuss how intertextuality in the text is connected to the theme of being marginalized?

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Discuss:
Offer a considered and balanced review that includes a range of
arguments, factors or hypotheses. Opinions or conclusions
should be presented clearly and supported by appropriate
evidence.

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This area is concerned with the set of relations between one text and another text.

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Question: Comment on how our narrator Yunior could be considered to be a dictator in terms of narration like trujillo?

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Question: Comment on how our narrator Yunior could be considered to be a dictator in terms of narration like trujillo?

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Comment: Give a judgment based on a given statement.

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Question: Discuss how Oscar Wao could be considered to challenge readers? 

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Question: Discuss how Oscar Wao could be considered to challenge readers? 

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Discuss: Offer a considered and balanced review that includes a range of arguments. Opinions or conclusions should be presented clearly and supported by appropriate evidence.

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Examine the way Oscar Wao offers multiple perspectives on the issue of gender?
Examine: Consider an argument or concept in a way that uncovers the nature of the issue

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How could Junot Diaz be "speaking" to the readers through the text?

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Glossary: Explain

Give a detailed account including reasons or causes.

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Area of Exploration: Readers, Writers, Texts.

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Area of Exploration: Readers, Writers, Texts.

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This area is concerned with the construction of meaning in the text.