Summary: The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz describes the coming of age story of Oscar, the struggle of Oscar’s family that has gone on for generations, and the Dominican diaspora. In doing so, Diaz argues that the Dominican Diaspora and other Diasporas face immense struggles in the United States. Such struggle can be described by transnationalism, which “considers the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multistranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (lecture 12/2/16). The idea of transnationalism can also be seen in Macarena Gomez-Barris’s article “Two 9/11’s in a Lifetime…”. Gomez Barris argues that Chileans face several different struggles as a result of having suffered through two 9/11’s, the one in Chile, and the one in the United …show more content…
Oscar realized that he was becoming older when “the latest nerdery was no longer compelling (Diaz 170). Oscar’s obsession with American geek culture is a representation not only of his coming of age but also of his attempted but failed assimilation into American culture. Even though he partook in such activities, his sense of not belonging prevailed. Oscar’s coming of age story is a tale of a Dominican-American boy struggling between two nations and his search for who he is. Distinctly, Gomez-Barris writes about the refusal of second generation exiles to assimilate. He states that “dominant US culture was viewed as ‘imperialist’, ‘decadent’, and something to be resisted” (Gomez-Barris 99). While Oscar and his sister, Lola, attempted to assimilate into American culture as a result of transnational struggles, Gomez-Barris describes the Chileans as resistant to assimilation because they recognize the faults in US culture as a result of the two 9/11’s they