In Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: and Carolyn Ferrell’s “Don’t Erase Me Stories” ” the central characters did not fulfill their families ‘expectations and are viewed by their families as outcasts. In both The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and “Don’t Erase Me Stories” the main characters who face a lot of developmental issues which had an impact on their education. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Oscar was always the one that got picked on in school, from elementary straight up and through High School. Oscar was an extremely introverted person who was very much interested in science fiction and never really had much of an outside life. He cared about his family and friends, they also cared about him as well in return but they were also embarrassed and ashamed by him as well because he could not get a girl.

            In “Don’t Erase Me Stories” ” Lorrie had a very similar situation but his family was embarrassed and ashamed of him because of his lifestyle. Lorrie was a gay high school he was always singled out by his fellow students because he was gay. Both Oscar and Lorrie were singled out by the people closest to them because they did not fit in with the norms of both their environments.

            In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Oscar as I stated earlier Oscar was an outcast because he could not get a girl. His friends and family tried to in their point of view help him but Oscar thought that they were always trying to change him. One of the reasons why he thought they were trying to change him is because they kept using the theme of what a “real Dominican man” was. Oscar’s friends and family thought that real Dominican men were supposed the men that got all of the women they wanted. Not only was he not accepted by his family, He also had a hard time with getting people to believe that he was of Dominican decent. Even his friends and family at one point started doubting the fact of him being Dominican. One of the things that made it worse was that his friends were nerds just like Oscar but even they got girls at some point. The reason why they started doubting the fact that he was Dominican was because they completely failed to realize that he was not intending to be what they would call a “real Dominican man”. In elementary school he had two girlfriends but he got caught with one of them by the other one and both relationships ended. Here an argument can be made that he was being a little “real Dominican man” without knowing that he was being a “real Dominican man” because when he had two girlfriends none of friends or anybody in his family was teaching him about the idea of “real Dominican men”. “Anywhere else triple-zero batting average with the ladies might have passed without comment, but this is a Dominican kid we’re talking about, in a Dominican family ; dude was supposed to have Atomic Level G, was supposed to be pulling in the bitches with both hands. Everybody notice his lack of game and because they were Dominican everybody talked about it.” (24) His friends and family was saying that because he was Dominican he should be getting any and every girl because that was how the men in his family and of his culture operated.