“Tú no eres nada de dominicano:” Rethinking Caliban in Junot Diaz’sThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

• In Event: Precarious Identities: Battling History, Nostalgia, and the State in U.S. Latino/a Literature and Popular Culture

Abstract

This paper proposes an examination of identity production and performance in Junot Diaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The men of Diaz’s novel consistently engage with what Stuart Hall calls the dual axes of cultural identity—“the vector of similarity and continuity; and the vector of difference and rupture.” While the former acknowledges a shared form of history, the latter emphasizes “identity as a production which is never complete, always in process” (Hall). For Yunior and Oscar, identity construction is an ambivalent, incomplete process circumscribed by national, Diasporic, urban, and popular discourses. Moreover, for both men, ‘Dominicanness’ initially operates as a form of hegemonic masculinity rooted in (neo)colonial power and sexual conquest. Although as members of the Diaspora, both have access to other forms of masculinity and cultural identity, Yunior and Oscar must also contend with the complexities of masculinity and race iterated in U.S. society, in Latino/a communities, in urban environments, and in popular culture. Ultimately the text highlights the difficulties of constructing an identity—of “becoming”—in the face of these competing systems of power. Through Oscar and Yunior, the novel problematizes ‘Dominicanness’ and other forms of cultural authenticity/authority, and instead, underscores the fluidity and alterity of identity-as-process.

Author

• Jessica Magnani, St. Petersburg College