Oscar Wao Quotes

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”

“Rutgers was just girls everywhere, and there was Oscar, keeping me up at night talking about the Green Lantern. Wondering aloud, If we were orcs, wouldn’t we, at a racial level, imagine ourselves to look like elves?”

″[Oscar] [h]ad none of the Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldn’t have pulled a girl if his life depended on it. [..] Had no knack for music or business or dance, no hustle, no rap, no G. And most damning of all: no looks.”

“In September he headed to Rutgers New Brunswick, his mother gave him a hundred dollars and his first kiss in five years, his tío [uncle] a box of condoms: Use them all, he said, and then added: On girls. ”

“The white kids looked at his black skin and his afro and treated him with inhuman cheeriness. The kids of color, upon hearing him speak and seeing him move his body, shook their heads. You’re not Dominican.”