Similarities Between Oscar And Yunior

Although Yunior cannot accurately be considered a reincarnation of a Watcher from the Marvel Universe, he and Oscar, however, share similarities with another group of beings in the same universe known as the X-Men. The X-Men, which are a race of “hybrid species” (as Joy Sanchez-Taylor refers to them in her journal), are not all that different that Dominican Americans, and, by association, Oscar and Yunior. Yunior even addresses the likeness between Oscar and fictional race himself what he writes in the footnotes “You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto” (22n6). Mutants, as they are portrayed in the Marvel comics, go through many of the same hurdles that people of color

Whereas Oscar’s mutation can be seen by those around him, Yunior’s sort of marinades over time. Like Oscar, Yunior is also a nerd, on many occasions he admits to watching Akira, a Japanese anime with Oscar, and can even read his Elvish writing on their dorm room door “(Please don’t ask me how I know this. Please.) When I saw that I said: De León, you gotta be kidding. Elvish?”(172). This is not the only time in which Yunior inserts his knowledge of Pop culture. Throughout the course of the novel, Yunior references many different genres: from science fiction to fantasy, and Star Trek to The Lord of the Rings. Yunior’s love of things that would typically be classified as ‘nerdy’ is not the only thing that sets him apart (secretly) from Dominican culture. As the novel progresses, the reader can see that Yunior truly loves Lola, one of his ex girlfriends and Oscar’s sister. In fact, he moves in with Oscar during college at the request of Lola. Towards the conclusion of the novel, Yunior also says “I wish I could say it worked out, that Oscar’s death brought us together…[I] alternated between F… Lola and these incredibly narcissistic hopes of reconciliation that I did nothing to achieve”(324). Yunior’s mutant ability, which can only be defined by his actions throughout the novel, is actually disguising his feelings and who he is so that he may blend in with the Dominican concept of what it means to be masculine. After Oscar’s death and being too late to win Lola over, we begin to see a reemergence of Yunior, one who gets married and “don’t run around after girls anymore. Not much, anyway” (326), and that one day hopes to show Lola’s daughter the writings of Oscar’s that he has kept throughout the years. Yunior, at the conclusion of the story, has matured in many ways, much like the way Wolverine matures throughout the X-Men movies, and goes from being a “lone-ranger’ of sorts but eventually joins the X-Men in