Yunature vs. Domincanurture

Over the course of the three books, the audience is able to get a pretty good feel for who Yunior is as a person.  This is interesting because it presents the concept of Yunior’s instinct vs. how he was raised as a Dominican.  This mainly has to do with his treatment of women throughout the three books.  Yunior’s instinct is to treat women more like people and be respectful and a gentleman to them, but for a Dominican man to do this deviates from the norm that Yunior was raised in which is why he often struggles with this complicated difference.  In Drown, Rafa and Yunior’s father make it clear that Yunior is not the most masculine Dominican child. An example of this is when Yunior cries after he and Rafa get kicked off the bus.  However as Yunior grows up, he is influenced by the typical male Dominican culture which means objectifying women, and being more masculine.  Yunior keeps his emasculate side hidden as he grows up and instead becomes more of a typical Dominican male.  In the Brief Life of Oscar Wao, Yunior’s Dominican male nature is present as he coaches Oscar on how to get with girls.  However, you can tell he hides his emasculate side when it comes to certain things like Sci-Fi and fantasy which aren’t “cool” or “masculine”.  This battle between Yunior being who he is and who he was raised to be is seen in How You Lose Her when he repeatedly has a girlfriend that he “loves”, yet he always cheats on them with another girl.  When Yunior is talking about the struggle it has been trying to reconcile with Magda after he was caught cheating, two typical Dominican men tell him “find another girl” and that “jealousy is the best way to start a relationship” which is advice to getting action from girls, not building a good relationship with them (Diaz 18).  Yunior eventually loses Magda and is hurt by this loss which is why he cries when he is lowered into the cave by the Vice-President and his bodyguard.  Because Yunior is hurt by this experience, you would expect him to learn from it, but instead he goes and does almost the same thing with Alma. The difference is in how Yunior goes about after being caught.  With Magda, Yunior owns up to cheating, but with Alma, he tries to make an excuse and weasel out of the situation.  This is no doubt how a Dominican man would handle the situation, and the way Yunior was raised as a child leads him to do this.  However, as he does this Yunior knows it is wrong which is why he smiles “a smile your dissembling face remember until the day you die” (48).  Yunior feels guilty for acting in such a negative way, yet he does it anyway, thus demonstrating that he struggles with doing what he knows is right and what he knows his culture thinks is right.