In short, I did like to learn about the history of DR through a novel, however I had a very hard time with the language used and the depiction of women in this book.

I'm a book club and was actually scoping this out on Amazon the other day because I thought I would suggest it. That was the first I'd heard of it, and this is the second: maybe it's a sign!

Junot Diaz rocks my socks. Besides this novel, all y'all should read "Drown," his book of short stories. Holy hell ...

Why thank you, I *do* like to consider myself an "intellectual hipster". (: We read this book for my book club - loved it! If you want to read my review, it's on my book blog, Bookish

I loved this book. For some reason, I tend to find it easier to sympathize with "masculine" perspectives - I really enjoy Marquez, but I hated the one Allende book I read (maybe because the men always have agency and the women, um, don't). So I really liked this book, but of course it's because I sympathized with Oscar - the female characters were interesting but peripheral.

No! Junot Diaz came to my college, the University of Arkansas, in 2005, as a speaker for the Foreign Language Department. He got involved with my best friend while he was married (she had just gotten back from her first tour of Iraq and was visibly fucked up). The way that he treated her and handled things was not feminist. I hate having to read about him on my favorite feminist blog. He is just a man using his power and influence to take advantage of young women he should be teaching, not flying to the DR for a booty call.

When we critique the "depiction of women" I think we need to differentiate between realistic and exaggerated representations-- how they exist (at least in the novelistic eyes of this male narrator) and how we want them to appear. In terms of character development, all aspects of accessory characters cannot always be fully developed and saturated with intricate detail to the degree that we'd like. I would argue that Oscar's sister, mother, and great-aunt are depicted in a fair light, illuminating some aspects of their personal histories and individual struggles, to a reasonable degree within the context of this novel. In another sense, perhaps a full understanding of the inner-workings of women by a self-proclaimed teenaged nerd would prove somewhat implausible and unconvincing? Diaz illustrates some of the complexities within these heterosexual interpersonal relationships, with both genders contributing varying degrees of infatuation and cruelty at times. (as in, he gets his heart shit on plenty, too.. not to claim it’s a fair balance, but worth pointing out).

If the issue is a literary respect or reverence for women, Diaz does a reasonable job of portraying equal parts reality and respect for what these women in his life have had to endure at various points in their own lives. Perhaps we are not given the full spectrum of emotions and "character development" of these women because those aspects of a woman’s life are not always accessible from a male perspective. These traumatic events and personal histories may so often become internalized by dominicana women that a young man retelling the events would not know exactly how they've been affected, or the complexities of their emotional development. This is not to explain the absence of these voices, or to dismiss them in any way. But perhaps Diaz’s portrayal of women as undoubtedly fierce, but sometimes impenetrable “others” is not necessarily out of place or shortsighted in a literary work narrated from a male’s perspective, depicting life in a male-centric culture.

When Junot Diaz spoke at my college, I was struck by his proactive attention to feminist issues in his responses. He made a point of discussing how he perceived sexism in his own communities and had often thought about how his sisters would have been treated differently if they had expressed a similar interest in writing. I know that doesn't speak to his representation of women in this particular novel, but it does help to contextualize his work as an author somewhat.

When I read it, I found it to be quite powerful, feminismwise, but I couldn't tell how much of that was the intent of the author.

Basically, Oscar's only problem, originally, was that he wasn't lucky with women because he idealized them and didn't treat them as real people. He created all subsequent problems for himself. The fuku, we're told over and over, is what happens to Oscar at the end of the book.

But it's the women in the book who have truly horrendous things happen to them that are not of their choosing. They're the ones who are cursed with multiple rapes, violent beatings, and death threats from boyfriends or husbands. Given how violent Diaz's world is for women, and how eluctable Oscar's fate turned out to be, I had to assume there was a great deal of irony at work by saying, "Forget all those women, the real tragedy is that bro can't get laid, am I right?"

Diaz's book is being read too literally. The novel is about the consequences of sexual violence on one Caribbean family. We should never forget that institutionalized sexual violence was part of how the New World was 'won'.

The mother in the novel is raped and traumatized early in her childhood by her "adoptive family." Her real family was shattered by the threat of rape of the Dictator.

Oscar's problem is NOT that he cannot get laid. On the surface it may appear so but the deeper issue is he is the male child of a rape survivor. His mother's traumas have passed onto him, just as they have passed onto his sister. But as a male child he has no way of integrating or even understanding what has happened. His privilage blunts some but not all of the consequnces. We all accept that a mother's rape can effect a daughter, but it can also effect a son. Oscar has difficulty with intimacy in part of because of this terrible history of sexual violence that victimized his mother and begins under the Trujillo Presidency but has its real roots in the rape culture of the plantation that were first instituted in the Dominican.

And Oscar was beaten twice and killed. His life was violent too. Please dont forget that. But his male privilage protects him in the book from the worst of the violence. Diaz clearly points that out.

The narrator goes out of his way to objectify women. But this is not a POV that the book endorses. In the end the narrator gets nothing. He loses. And his POV is closer to that of the Dictator that starts the whole shebang off. And I think that is Diaz's point. The narrator of the book, if you read carefully enough, is aligned with the evil that has haunted the Dominican. The narrator unknown to himself is the modern day version of the Dictator that made all these rapes and all these violences possible.

Diaz warns again and again in the book to beware writers. He warns that they have much in common with dictators. The narrator of his novel and Trujillo end up having a lot in common.

Diaz the writer has male privilage and so therefore will never transcend them. But he has clearly realized this and written a novel that turns those very limitations into a condemnation of how "populist" male logic has everything to do with the male logic that allowed a Trujillo and by extension the plantation system to prosper. If you keep Diaz and the narrator seperate and you read the narrator is the secret dictator then the book begins to make real sense, in my opinion.