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Navigate the Summary Parts: Part 1: Oscar's childhood Part 2: Sister Lola's story Part 3: Mom Beli's story Part 4: Narrator Yunior's story Part 5: Grandpa Abelard's story Part 6: Oscar in love Part 7: Conclusion

Summary of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
Pages 263-292

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Chapter 6. Land of the Lost 1992-1995.  (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Oscar graduates college and returns to his mother's house.  He begins substitute-teaching at the same high school he once attended, Don Bosco. He spends the next year doing this and sending out his short stories and novels, but no one is interested. 

The subbing leads to a permanent teaching position, but it's like he's regressed back to the mindless cruelty of high school all over again.  The students tease and mock him.  His only friend on the staff as a former mental patient named Nataly about whom he entertains strange sexual fantasies because (page 265) "… she was not hot enough, in his mind, to date openly." Nataly borrows a lot of money from him which she never repays and their friendship ends when she returns to her paranoid boyfriend.

Oscar lives at home with his bitter mom Beli, whose cancer is temporarily in remission, and his crazy heroin-addict uncle. He has days where he's so depressed that he can't write or get out of bed. He takes long endless drives into Pennsylvania and adjacent states.  He dreams about the spirit guide the Mongoose.  He experiences despair when the war-gaming fad in general turns away from the elaborate scenarios and miniatures that he enjoys and towards the Magic card-sets that he just doesn't find interesting.

He writes the occasional depressed letter to Lola who has given up teaching English in Japan to live with narrator Yunior back in New Jersey. Poor Lola got pregnant briefly with Yunior and was excited about it until she learned he was inevitably cheating on her, and then she aborted the baby.

Oscar decides to take a summer vacation back to Santa Domingo with his mom, uncle, and Lola.  La Inca and the rest of the Dominican relatives are overjoyed to see them.  Oscar spends a few weeks doing tourist stuff with Lola and his cousins and then decides to stay on for the entire summer rather than fly back with Lola to New Jersey where nothing much awaits him.

Then Oscar catches sight of La Inca's neighbor two houses down:  a "semi-retired" prostitute, 35 year-old Ybon.  Ybon, a reckless alcoholic, invites Oscar over and tells him her life story for six hours while getting totally smashed on booze. He's astounded finally to realize midway through this that she is a prostitute. After this, Oscar and Ybon are inseparable to the great disapproval of La Inca and Beli. But then one day Oscar goes over to see another man's Jeep with official government plates parked outside Ybon's house.  Crushed, he realizes that she must have a boyfriend.  However, he still visits her a few days later when the Jeep is gone, and the two of them continue their friendship as if nothing has happened.

Apparently they never kiss or have sex, but Oscar is Ybon's only real friend.  Oscar says, not joking, that they should get married, and Ybon laughs him off. He watches in vain for signs that Ybon might love him, but hopes that he can move her towards this by returning to Santo Domingo during his Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations. She looks sad when he tells her his plans to return. She starts mentioning her jealous boyfriend, the police captain a lot more often.  She tells Oscar he should get his own girlfriend.  But Oscar has already helped her undress for bed when she's too drunk to know what she's doing, and he's seen enough of her naked to be totally obsessed with her by now.  Even the thought of the jealous boyfriend wanting to meet him isn't enough to scare him off.

One night someone shoots a round through the house of La Inca. She, Beli, and the uncle are frightened.  Oscar ignores his intuition that this happened because of his friendship with the police captain's girlfriend. He shrugs off La Inca's accusing look, and trots off to spend the day with Ybon.
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