This one by Junot Diaz had been on my TBR list for a really long time, what with it being a classic and all. A few years ago, a neighbor loaned me her copy and I’m ashamed to say it sat on my shelf for so long before I finally got around to reading it.
Part of the reason it took me so long was that I heard some accusations of sexual harassment leveled against Diaz and that really made me hesitant to read his stuff. If it hadn’t been for the fact that my neighbor will no doubt ask me about it when I finally return it to her, I would have skipped it entirely. But since I’m determined to read and return all the books that have been loaned to me by the end of this year, I took the plunge into this book and hoped for the best. After all, there are plenty of problematic men out there who still produce art I love *cough* Joss Whedon *cough*
Nope. It’s so sexist.
First, Oscar spends a whole chapter objectifying women. I skimmed that chapter, hoping the rest of the book would be better, but nope. Act II focused on Oscar’s mom, and when Diaz claimed all her power came from her sex appeal, I knew this wasn’t going to get any better.
I was also deeply troubled by the portrayal of Oscar as someone who can’t talk to women because he’s a geek who loves fantasy, sci-if, and RPGs. I was friends with a lot of those guys in high school, and no, they had no problem talking to girls. If anything they had an advantage over creeps like Diaz because they aren’t threatening, which is not to say they’re eternally stuck in the friend zone. The guys I went to high school with were having sex with women who were just as into comic books as they were. Given this book and Diaz’s personal history, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be one of those geeks who thinks women can’t be “true” geeks and quizzes them endlessly until he finds the one thing she doesn’t know and uses it against her instead of befriending her, then blames her for being a “snob” when she refuses to have sex with him.
I’ll give Diaz some leeway because there’s a racial element I’ve never had to deal with. It’s one thing to be Dominican and another to be a geek, but a Dominican geek (at least one who’s openly geeky) is rare, and that must be lonely, especially in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Even so, the mentions of Oscar shopping at a comic book store make me think, “Come on, he’s not making enough money to single handedly keep that store open. Won’t any of the other patrons befriend him?”
It’s worth noting that Oscar does finally fall in love and get laid, but not until after he’s lost all his excess weight, so we can add fat shaming to the list of things that make this book problematic.
All that having been said, this book is beautifully written (albeit with a whole lot of swearing and liberal use of the N word). I wish it had been better thought out so I could have enjoyed it more.