Effect of Colonialism on Gender Equality Relating to the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
When it comes to delegating responsibility, allocating power, and demanding equality, there always seems to be an underlying bias towards the masculine sector of society, which allows an imbalance regarding gender equality. Understanding where this way of thinking comes from is an essential part of trying to shift and completely erase the bias. Throughout history, a patriarchal pattern and way of thinking has been passed down from generation to generation; what we fail to see is the reason for this pattern and the ways in which we can remedy the situation. A great example of this issue is displayed in the novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. The female characters of Junot Diaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, La Inca, Beli, and Lola, demonstrate the ways in which colonialism led to the dehumanization of citizens, especially women, and how these power dynamics carry over into modern society in relationships between the majority and minority, both in terms of race and gender in their oppression and the stigma that is attached to being a Dominican immigrant women in America. There are three important women in the novel: La Inca, Beli, and Lola. Each are strong women who battle each other, men, the fuku, their past, their color, and--most important the fact that they are women. One can argue that this habit of undermining the female population comes all the way from when colonialism began to take place. Not only did this Western idea of colonizing mean degrading those that were more, barbaric and unfortunate. “..we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer,to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism.” (Cesaire 35) But it was from this that the idea of judging humans by their appearance came about and began to exist. Prior to this the idea of looking and judging by color, gender and physical