The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (excerpt) by Junot Diaz

Our selection for Sips and Stories this Thursday will be the fourth chapter of the first section of the acclaimed Junot Diaz novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Sentimental Education. The novel has gotten numerous accolades* and great reviews; there's a good chance you already have it on your bookshelf! The selection we'll be reading is set on Rutger's University and deals with a variety of issues including: Assignments, Roommate Conflict, Masculinity, Suicidal Ideation, Family, Immigrant Experience, Alcohol use, etc.

The wine will be any Sauvignon Blanc, which is typically dry, (so I'll also have a bottle of sweeter stuff if you don't like it!)

*Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize

Possible Discussion Questions

1. How does the style of writing affect the telling of the story? (conversational tone, untranslated Spanish, allusions, etc.)

2. How does reading what happened through Junior’s point of view affect the telling/receiving of the story?

3. Junior has a strong sense of who he is. He frequently identifies being a Dominican male with having a lot of sex with different women. When discussing why he chose to “fix” Oscar he says, “What I should have done was check myself into Bootie Rehab. But if you thought I was going to do that, then you don’t know Dominican men. Instead of focusing on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive.” Junior calls himself a “playboy,” and “the biggest player of them all.” In the excerpt, in what ways does Junior identify himself with his idea of masculinity? How does he exclude others that don’t fit this ideal? On our campus, how do our male students identify themselves as “manly?”

4. Junior discusses how after his fight with Oscar, “they acted like roommates act when they’re beefing.” How does their experience compare with other roommate conflicts you’ve dealt with?

5. What unique aspects of residence hall living (in this case, a living-learning program experience) did Junior mention in telling this story? What were positive, what were negative?

6. Junior speaks disparagingly of his residence hall and its reputation. How does Demarest’ identity affect Junior and Oscar? What reputations / identities do our buildings have? How does that affect the students we work with?

7. Oscar attempts suicide because he cannot “get a girl.” He worries that being a virgin means he is a failure. In the news recently, a young man shot and murdered several campus sorority members in California for what appears to be the same reason. Are these isolated incidents or is the idea that to be a man (or to be fulfilled/happy/whole/etc), a young man must be successful in “getting girls?” Is this a realm of identity that we, as student affairs professionals, have any influence? How can we help the students we work with, both male and female, navigate this time in their lives when not being able to get sex seems to equate to being a failure?  

8. What student development theories help to explain the development of the characters in this story?