Romantic and Familial Love in the Dominican Republic

Love is fundamental to being Human. Latinx cultural love is only a different flavor of the same food.

Junot Díaz is an author known to write on the topic of love. He is a modern artist who appeals to modern people through pop culture and brutal honesty. In his novel “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” he writes about both familial love and romantic love through the Dominican culture, both in a separate, dynamic ways. In the novel, Oscar is a hopeless romantic. When he was young and charming he was compared to famous Dominican lovers and actors, he was a player. As he grew up, and out, girls lost interest, but he didn’t. “Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock.” (pg. 11) Both loving and lusty, he was not quite the romantic protagonist that he envisioned himself to be, and he struggled with love, the lack of it, in his life.

“His affection- that gravitational mass of love, fear, longing, desire, and lust that he directed at every girl in the city without regard to looks, age, or availability—broke his heart each and every day.” (pg. 23)

Oscar gets no attention from girls that aren’t his sister or otherwise romantically involved, but he is always reminded of the ways in which he fails through the lens of his culture. Oscar is reminded by others in his life, and Santo Domingo itself, that he does not meet the stereotypes or the standards set for Dominican men. Oscar develops deep depression and almost commits suicide over his lifelong lacking. Junot Diaz uses Oscar in this book to show the loves of joy, the brief and wondrous moments that Oscar catches before inevitable failure that tears him apart and causes him immense grief.

Junot also explores familial love in “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” using the female characters in the novel. La Inca is the guardian of Beli, Beli is the mother of Lola, Oscar’s sister. La Inca was a strong and kind woman who had tried to raise Beli to the best of her ability. She loved Beli, refusing to hit her, but spoiling her. Beli grew into a ferocious mother, brought down by great tragedies, who did not treat Lola so kindly. The culture of Santo Domingo is made mention of to illustrate this point, Lola making a general statement of the ways in which Dominican mothers are supposed to treat their daughters, and it is very negative.

“She was my Old World Dominican mother and I was her only daughter, the one she had raised up herself with the help of nobody, which meant that it was her duty to keep me crushed under her heel.” (pg. 55)

In the book Oscar struggles more with romantic and sexual love, finding familial love and support in La Inca and Lola. Lola does not struggle with romantic or sexual love like Oscar does. Lola is a beautiful woman who struggles more with familial love and identity. Beli is a centerpiece to these issues by struggling with both. She struggled to find the right kind of love, romanticizing bad boys who treat her badly and use her, but she also pushes away her family, those who take care of her and those who she is responsible for.

It is often noted in the novel that Dominican men are sly and selfish animals, either in contrast to Oscar or in detriment to Beli.

“La Inca shook her head. She was looking at her favorite picture of his mother on her first day at private school, one of those typical serious DR shots. What always happens. Un maldito hombre.” (pg. 32)

 

Junot Díaz  writes stories based around love because he considers love to be essential, a part of being human. He writes on the ideas of  Dominican, racial stereotypes and he contrasts those ideas with Oscar. In an interview with Fifteen Minutes, Fifteen Questions with Junot Diaz, Junot talks about how he came to read and enjoy books about love. He talks about how he recognized geder roes early in his childhood, and enjoyed reading what wasnt nessisarily made for him. He also talks on the importance of love to people and the unfairness of the relationship between love and men.

“On the one hand, we’re told that the sort of proof and excellence of a man is measured by how many girls he can get, by his lack of vulnerability, by his indifference and often his hostility towards what would be considered traditional women’s arenas: domesticity, love, familial bonds, nurturing, family. And then there’s the other side which is: Who the fuck can be whole, who the fuck can be human without intimacy, without encountering that profound terror that we call love? On the one hand, you’re being told that that shit doesn’t mean shit. That that shit is shit. And on the other hand, your heart is dying for it.”

Junot, it seems became very popular in social media, and he has done many interviews with many different outlets. The dynamic nature of his ideas on love are shown in another interview of him, taking a much different tone. In Six Question Sex Interview with Junot Diaz, Junot relates his ideas to the specific topic of sex.

“…as an artist I love what our sexual stuff says about our deeper selves. I’m fucking fascinated by what we reveal about our hearts and our humanity when we take our clothes of, when we’re lusting. Who we are in bed versus who we are in the regular world—really that’s the closest we come to lycanthropy and the real reason why sex sells endlessly. In sex we are often revealed for who we really are. I always imagined that Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about sex when he said: “Man is not truly one, but truly two.”

Junot Díaz recognizes the importance of love, romantic, sexual, and familial, and that is what he writes about. Both within and without the context of Dominican culture.