ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that national and historical gendered violence is linked to a continuing rape culture, in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). The novel portrays the displaced lives of Dominican-American protagonist Oscar and his immigrant family, driven from the Dominican Republic to escape an intergenerational curse called the fukú. Fukú is a name for the structural violence generated by the brutal regime of Dominican dictator Trujillo that traumatizes Oscar’s family for generations, and follows the family to the U.S. despite their attempt at escape. Importantly, the origins of this curse lie in Oscar’s grandfather’s refusal to allow his daughter to be raped by Trujillo, which is mirrored across borders and generations in Oscar’s own refusal to conform to a systemic rape culture in the U.S. Trujillo’s regime of violence against women is thus intertwined with a contemporary model of toxic masculinity that renders men into perpetrators of rape. Oscar is violently murdered in punishment for his failure to assimilate into this system. Díaz’s depiction of gendered violence as a pervasive, systemic, and intergenerational force links the gendered violence of a national dictatorship to a more contemporary, ongoing rape culture.
