76 pages • 2 hours read
Junot DíazA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Oscar de León is an overweight Dominican American young man with a passion for what the book refers to as “the Genres”: science fiction, fantasy, superhero comics, and tabletop role-playing games. As a member of the Dominican diaspora that fled Trujillo’s vicious regime, Oscar feels strongly connected to his ancestral home. At the same time, Oscar’s personality and worldview clash with traditional Dominican masculinity. His inability to attract women, his love of nerd culture, and his overuse of big words like “pulchritudinous” alienate him from his Dominican peers, who question whether he is really Dominican at all.
Though keenly aware of the personal and political misfortune that’s swept through his family for three generations, Oscar prefers to think of this trauma as the result of a supernatural curse, like something out of one of his favorite books or films. He is naturally drawn to stories in which outcasts are suddenly given enormous powers or responsibilities, particularly J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings book series and the 1988 anime film Akira. As he grows older, he begins to lean toward texts like Alan Moore’s The Watchmen, which depicts trauma as an unending cycle.
On a visit to the Dominican Republic, Oscar meets Ybón, and although he knows he will die there, he later returns to the country to continue courting here, a decision that results in his death.
By Junot Díaz
Drown
Drown
Junot Díaz
How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)
How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)
Junot Díaz
This Is How You Lose Her
This Is How You Lose Her
Junot Díaz
Wildwood
Wildwood
Junot Díaz
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection