Abstract

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz entertains a wide variety of themes through various characters primarily of a Dominican background.  The focal character is an overweight outcast named Oscar de León, a young man struggling to meet the unspoken rules of Dominican masculinity throughout his life.  His college roommate, Yunior de Las Casas, as well as a majority of  the men described over the course of the novel, seem to more easily fit into this prevalent aspect of Dominican-American culture by demonstrating machismo through brutish power as well as heteronormative, chauvinistic ideals of relationships and sexuality, among other elements.  However, Yunior as the narrator of the novel often accidentally reveals private moments of nerdiness and affection toward Oscar to the reader that remain hidden from the novel’s other characters.  This essay thus argues that because of Yunior’s intimate familiarity with the consequences of being labeled an Other, Yunior uses hyper-masculinity as a cloak to hide not only his own inner nerd but his romantic feelings for Oscar, all in order to blend into the machismo of Dominican-American culture.  Due to the novel’s relatively recent publication date (2007), little has been written on the novel and even less has been written analyzing the sexuality of male characters.  As such, this essay’s themes and conclusions are largely original, though based in current related scholarship.