The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

What role does the torrent of cultural references play in the narrative? How do these references relate to the themes of reckoning with trauma through storytelling? Do they play any other roles?

Many highly regarded novels have been written about the Trujillo era, including Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat. Rather than work in the genre of historical fiction as those authors do, Díaz takes a much different approach, telling the story of the Trujillo era from the perspective of a Dominican American who wasn’t even born at the time of Trujillo’s death. What are the advantages and disadvantages of telling the story of the Trujillato in this way?

How do Oscar, Yunior, and Lola navigate the cultural incongruities of being Dominican American in the late 20th century? How do their approaches differ? In what ways are their approaches similar?