Literary Fiction · MelancholicA Dominican-American boy in New Jersey wants to be a writer and fall in love, and his family is cursed
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An overweight Dominican-American boy dreams of becoming a writer and finding love, but his family is cursed
Oscar is a sweet but very overweight young man from a New Jersey neighborhood who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and of finding love. But a curse that has followed his family for generations, the fukú, seems to stand in his way. The novel traces that curse from Santo Domingo to the United States, in a story about Dominican-American history and the lengths people go to for love.
More about this book
Who
Oscar de León, an overweight Dominican boy in Paterson, New Jersey, who loves science fiction and fantasy and longs to fall in love. His family lives under a curse. Also central are his sister Lola, his mother Beli and his grandfather Abelard.
World
Paterson, New Jersey, and, behind it, the Dominican Republic under the dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled from 1930 to 1961.
What makes it different
Most of it is narrated by Yunior de las Casas, Lola's former boyfriend and Oscar's friend, with Lola taking over now and then. Footnotes expand on characters and history. The language mixes English and Spanish, Spanglish and invented words, and moves from street slang to academic prose. The curse is the fukú, a doom tied to the Dominican experience, and its counterpart is zafa.
Feel
Part history, part magical realism, with constant references to comics, fantasy and science fiction. It won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.