The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

[Jim__]

This is the story of a Dominican family living in Patterson, NJ. A mother, daughter, and son - Oscar. The story tells us that in Dominican culture, for a man, game is everything. As a young child, Oscar got game. He dances, he flirts, he knows. He has 2 girlfriends. Then, one of his girlfriends, the better looking one, tells him he has to choose. Forced to decide, Oscar makes the only possible choice, he chooses the better looking one. The breakup with the other little girl is devastating for her; but Oscar isn't very sympathetic. Then, just a few weeks later, his chosen one starts running around on him. Oscar's turn to be devastated; and he can't recover. He takes to eating obsessively, he begins to live vicariously through books, TV and video games. Fat and nerdy, Oscar becomes the neighborhood joke. Maybe it's fuku':

They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fuku' americanus, or more colloquially, fuku' - generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and Doom of the New World. Also called the fuku' of the Admiral because the Admiral was both its midwife and one of its great European victims; despite "discovering" the New World the Admiral died miserable and syphilitic, hearing (dique) divine voices. In Santo Domingo, the Land He Loved Best (what Osar, at the end, would call the Ground Zero of the New World), the Admiral's very name has become synonymous with both kinds of fuku', little and large; to say his name aloud or even to hear it is to invite calamity on the heads of you and yours.

The rest of the story is largely the tale of Oscar's search for love; moving, funny, tragic.

The story is told to us by different narrators. Spanish sentences and phrases are peppered throughout the text; but the meaning is clear from the context; and it adds flavor. As the story delves deeper and deeper into the lives of these people, it takes us deeper into Dominican history. Especially as that history relates to Trujillo, the Dominican dictator from 1930 - 1961.

It's a entertaining, educational read.

[Goblinmonger]

1. Just started this yesterday

For some reason it took a bit (about 15) pages to really get into the flow of the narration (and it wasn't the footnotes, which I like in the style they are used), but I really like it now. Very witty and touching, though I have only been reading it a bit at a time (high school English teacher and we, as a department, do 10 minutes of silent reading at the beginning of each class and this is my current book, so about 40 minutes a day).