The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Setting 1 key example

Oscar grows up in Paterson, a city in northern New Jersey not far from New York City, and returns after college to teach at his old school. Paterson is the site of Oscar’s mother Beli’s American dream—she came to New Jersey from the Dominican Republic. But her family’s fortunes don’t improve here. Oscar is a social outcast in Paterson, and he struggles to achieve the kind of masculinity expected of him. In Chapter 1, Yunior writes: 

It wouldn’t have been half bad if Paterson and its surrounding precincts had been like Don Bosco or those seventies feminist sci-fi novels he sometimes read—an all-male-exclusion zone. Paterson, however, was girls the way NYC was girls, Paterson was girls the way Santo Domingo was girls. Paterson had mad girls [...]

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Peterson had mad girls, and those girls didn’t like Oscar. Oscar’s struggles and dissatisfactions are frequently projected onto Paterson. 

Additionally, much of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is set in Santo Domingo, where Oscar spends summers. For most of the novel, Oscar doesn’t have more social or romantic success in the DR than he does in New Jersey. If anything, his bad luck with girls is more stark in Santo Domingo, where his nerdiness stands out more. But eventually, he falls in love with Ybón in Santo Domingo. Once Oscar has met Ybón, he comes to love the Dominican Republic in a new way. 

The flashbacks to the lives of Beli and Abelard Cabral also take place in the Dominican Republic earlier in the 20th century. These flashbacks take place during Trujillo’s reign, coloring in the historical context that shapes the lives of Oscar, Yunior, and Lola in the novel’s present.