The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao question

I don't think it's meant to add anything to the story. I think eschewing quotation marks is just the fashion among authors who are trying to be seen as "literary."

I think that's, at best, a lazy and jaded assessment. I haven't seen that refusal to use quotations in any other written work lately, including works by authors considered literary. Moreover, I don't think Junot Diaz has shown himself to be someone who writes for others' conventions. He's dedicated his work to things he cares about: Dominican people and Latino immigrants. These are people who the world at large doesn't give a shit about. I also thought that the style in Oscar Wao was a bit different from his other works, especially in the broken up narrative timeline, the varied narrators, and the quotes. If this is pandering to literary norms, it seems unnecessary to me given the success of his two short story collections.