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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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) 

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) 

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.

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. 

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. 

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

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.

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, “

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.