Wildwood

“Wildwood” is a chapter in Junot Diaz’s first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and it was also published separately as a standalone short story. The coming-of-age story is told by Lola, Oscar’s older sister, who endures a contentious and often violent relationship with their mother, Belicia. The first part of the story is told in the second person, with Lola speaking to her slightly younger self, removed from the experience. The “you” of the second-person point of view also engages the reader on a personal level, giving more plausibility to the story and drawing a kinship with the reader. It also creates a clear separation between her childhood self and her more matured self, which is communicated through first-person narration later in the story.

At the beginning of the story, specific and lengthy details are given here about Lola’s mother’s breasts. In six different ways, they are described as being large, and the young, flat-chested Lola is embarrassed by them. Her mother sees them as symbols of sexuality and attractiveness, but Lola feels that they merely garner negative attention, and she specifically speaks about them in a desexualized, almost disgusted way. Belicia’s appearance is dramatically altered when she undergoes a double mastectomy and chemotherapy to fight her breast cancer. Her appearance—her face, hair, and ample breasts—is what she is most proud of. Though Lola can’t understand, it’s clear that Belicia feels she’s lost an element of her identity. It’s revealed at the end of the story that she attracted a dangerous man as a teenager in Santo Domingo, an event that severely impacted the rest of her life. Her sexuality thus has a complex effect on her emotional wellbeing; losing what she believes bolsters this sexuality worsens her overall distress in life. Her rage intensifies, and her relationship with Lola begins to erode. Lola has one of her “bruja,” or somewhat magical premonitions when she gets an overwhelming sense that something is about to happen that will change her life. These moments of magical realism happen throughout the story and signal pivots in the plot.

Lola takes over as a first-person narrator at this point in the story, coming closer to the experience to offer more details and insight. She becomes increasingly restless as her mother’s anger is more pronounced and projected onto her. Reading “Wildwood” in isolation from the novel, Belicia’s harsh words and vicious manner are viewed only through what Lola knows and chooses to share about her mother. Belicia came to the United States alone. Her husband abandoned her and the children, and she is in a fight for her life with breast cancer. The reader does not know more than that from the first-person narrator. She is—not unfairly—cast as an antagonist, as she calls Lola ugly, worthless, and stupid, makes her do all the chores in the house, and goes back on promises. Empathy for Belicia diminishes particularly after she dismisses Lola’s account of molestation by a neighbor and threatens to kill her daughter on several occasions. Lola says she randomly attacks her, grabbing her by the throat until she can pry her fingers off.

Her mother’s demeanor and actions correlate to Lola’s increasing rebellion. The cancer is the starting gun in Lola’s race to liberation. She adopts a punk-goth style, shaves her head, and takes to hanging out all night at a club. She still reads, still loves her brother, and for the most part, still respects her mother. At 14, Lola decides to run away and live with her white boyfriend, Aldo, and his father, who live in Wildwood at the Jersey Shore. It’s not lost on Lola that she has probably traded one bad situation for another. Aldo hates his 74-year-old, bitter war veteran father who padlocks the refrigerator and keeps the cat’s litter box in Aldo’s room. The man is not endeared to Lola at all and makes it clear in his words and actions—just like at home with her mother. Though Aldo is an overall negative character, it’s clear he suffers from mistreatment and repressed trauma as well. The decision to title the story “Wildwood,” a subject that doesn’t occupy a significant amount of the narrative, could allude to two things: It encapsulates this time in Lola’s life through its name, wild, and it symbolizes her overall desire to escape.

Implicatively, her decision to flee her home to occupy a place in an overtly hostile white household speaks to more than one urge. She physically wants to escape her mother, but thematically, there is a desire to escape a history of trauma that exists at The Intersection of Gender, Culture, and Race. She says that she longs for a “life that existed beyond Paterson, beyond my family, beyond Spanish” (Paragraph 11). It’s made clear after some time, though, that there is no place for her in Wildwood either; she is fed up with Aldo after he makes a racist joke directed at her. He still tries to have sex with her, exposing that she only exists to be demeaned or objectified in his mind. Ultimately, her experiences in this part of the story indicate that immigrants or people ousted from their homes experience an oppressive sense of displacement that can’t be escaped. Lola doesn’t fit in with any of the neighborhoods she occupies. She can only settle and thrive in her environment when she returns to her mother’s real home, completing the journey instigated when Belicia’s parents sent her away.

The limited first-person narration centers the story on Lola’s memory and interpretation. While with Aldo, she wonders if her family is looking for her or if Oscar can cook for himself. When she finally calls home and talks to her brother after Aldo’s racist comments toward her, another interpretation is introduced. Oscar tells her that Mami is going to kill her, signaling that she is furious that Lola has run away. Still, the deeper foundation of that fury is not named or even known. While her behavior is overtly villainous throughout the story, it lacks much explanation without the context of the rest of the novel, calling into question Lola’s view of her. Like with any limited first-person perspective, the presentation of the events of the story aren’t fully reliable. In a violent scene not unlike those at home, Lola returns to her turbulent past when she attempts to meet with Oscar to run away. She is back in the clutches of her mother, physically and emotionally. Belicia sends Lola back to Santo Domingo to live with her mother, whom she separated from at about the same age as Lola.

The story switches to the present tense when Lola is living with her grandmother, going to school, running with the track team, and making friends. An expectation for some sort of resolution in the last paragraphs isn’t entirely fulfilled. One evening, her grandmother is looking at old photographs, including one of Belicia at Lola’s age. As she tells Lola about what Belicia was like, as well as the trouble that caused her to be sent away, Lola’s otherworldly feeling that something important is about to happen returns stronger than ever. She is on the precipice of the truth about why her mother left the Dominican Republic when the force of a premonition slams her. Her feeling that she is about to become something new implies she is becoming an adult. As she is finally able to understand her mother in some capacity, she can reach a new level of maturity that she couldn’t previously. The facts of her mother’s life are revealed but not explored or explicitly connected within the story. They are left for Lola to contemplate on her own. It transforms a story about escaping an abusive household into a narrative about Intergenerational Trauma and Coming of Age, with a child reliving the experiences of their parent, guided by the force of their past struggles.