The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao

In this book I found many interesting dynamics. Among those that most interested me were the gender dynamics. Surprisingly I had never had any conversation of gender inequalities or constructions in my academic career so  I actually never thought much into gender until here recently. In this book there are many interesting inferences of gender roles in Latino communities. It seems as though men are taught to be hyper masculine. And manhood is thought of something that is to be attained by asserting certain characteristics. You are not a man because you were born a male. No you have to walk this way, talk this way, be this way to be a "real man." Manhood can be taken away if you do not exhibit the hyper masculine characteristics forced on you as a child. This idea of attainable manhood for masculinity can be problematic in many ways. It can cause men to feel the need to over emphasize or become over protective of their "manhood." Which can result in the prevalence of abuse that is also discussed in Wao. Sexual and domestic abuse, as well as homophobia can all be easily reproduced as a response to hyper masculinity. This hyper masculinity also has an affect on the construction of femininity. If males must be dominate in order to be men, then that means women must be subordinate. Seen and not heard. Women's traumas are see as unimportant as the community focus and attention is predominately concerned with males. This is seen in the "hushing" of sexual abuse within the story. Abuse is often shrugged off as typical male behavior that women should just deal with and put out of their minds. Womanhood takes a backseat to manhood. And with the hyper masculinity comes hypo femininity. The importance of men's manhood is emphasized and women's woman hood is given little to no consideration. No one is concerned for the dignity of the women, only the pride of the men. The woman is merely ornamental not functional. She should stick to being a good mother and wife in the house, while shying away from anything that may make her visible or vocal to the world. She should suffer in silence her invisibility as the man should also suffer in silence his hyper visibility.