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ALL THE FEELS (Alienation from American society (RACE/CULTURE (David Eng…

- - - - Oscar Diaz, the main character, is a Dominican male, but is far from the norms of masculinity from his culture. His masculinity, or lack thereof, is very tied to his culture. He was never a “‘normal’ Dominican boy” (Diaz, 11) and how for the rest of Oscar’s life, he “...never had much luck with the females (how very un-Dominican of him)” (Diaz, 11)
      - Oscar's family immigrated from the Dominican Republic to the United States. In the narratives of his mother, sister, and grandmother as well as himself, there is a an aspect of something missing from their lives. That feeling stems from the diaspora of immigrating to a new country. They experience the feeling of racial melancholy.
      - The novel also incorporates Spanish into the text, as it is woven throughout the narration without the translation. This contradicts assimilation as the incorporation and integration of Spanish challenges English as the dominant narrative
      - oscar's lack of masculinity alienates him in his culture and society. this is one of his reasons for loving science fiction, as it served as an escape and "possibility of another world"(Munoz 1)
  - - - Changez notices his racial/cultural difference with his colleagues "He looked at [his colleague]—at his fair hair and light eyes and, most of all, his oblivious immersion in the minutiae of our work—and thought, you are so foreign. [He] felt in that moment much closer to the Filipino driver than to him; [he] felt I was play-acting when in reality I ought to be making my way home, like the people on the street outside” (Hamid 66)
      - Changez's culture and race gets scrutinized and discriminated against after the attacks on September 11th on the New York World Trade Center.
        
        The country was in a state of loss--> melancholia and mourning so society puts those feelings into discrimination and prejudice. Also used it as an excuse for patriotism for the country when it was really just fear speaking
        
        after 9/11, fear was used as a political move to detain bodies under 'terrorist' suspicion. Changez experienced that, such as being held and questioned at the airport about his business in America
    - - Kingston's shy/quiet classmate represented the aspects and stereotypes of her own culture that she wanted to reject in order to assimilate into American life and culture, a common narrative in the diaspora of people of color. Kingston wanted to dissociate herself from that classmate, but instead understood her. She denies and rejects her culture.
      - One of the main themes in the novel is this search of identity, and for the narrator, a part of her identity is missing as she doesn’t know much about her family’s history, such as her nameless aunt and the country of her family's origins, China. She has to deal with the familial expectation of it as well as her own desire for her own identity
    - - Uses a medium, like film and literature, to express one's feelings and emotions
- - - - bell hooks, “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination”
        -black folks have a different relationship with whiteness, stemming from historical white supremacy
        
        "Stereotypes black folks maintain about white folks, are not the only representations of whiteness in the black imagination.They emerge primarily as responses to white stereotypes of blackness." (341)
        
        "Though systems of domination, imperialism, colonialism, racism, actively coerce black folks to internalize negative perceptions of blackness, to be self-hating, and many of us succumb, blacks who imitate whites (adopting their values, speech, habits of being, etc.) continue to regard whiteness with suspicion, fear, and even hatred."(338)
        
        they have been taught to hate their blackness and be ashamed of it.