Moving between present and past, English and Spanish,
street slang and intellectual references, humor and tragedy, Juno
Diaz’s award-winning The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a tour de force. Diaz tells about
the brutal Trujillo regime in his native Dominican Republic through the
story of one family that ended up in Paterson, New Jersey.
The title character is overweight and a nerd, which, along with
prejudice against his Dominican roots, socially ostracizes him. Oscar
takes solace in reading and writing sci-fi and fantasy tales. Despite
the title, it’s Oscar’s mother, Beli, who is the pivotal character in
the well-to-do family’s downfall. Her teenage beauty caught Trujillo’s
eye; her father tried to shield her and ended up in prison, where he
died. Pregnant by Trujillo’s married brother-in-law, beaten by
Trujillo’s henchmen, Beli is secreted out of the DR. Life doesn’t get
better in the US; her husband abandons her with two children, and she
has to perform drudge jobs to support them. Oscar and his older sister,
Lola, grow up with a single mother who is bitter, fierce, combative,
and hypercritical.
From the start of the book, Diaz wonders whether the family is plagued
by the fukú, a curse. But perhaps there’s also a zafa, a blessing, in
Oscar’s foolishly sweet sacrifice for love at the end.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in
2008.
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