Book Review – Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novel
Junot Diaz's book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. The writing is fast and hilarious (in parts) and the "coming to America" story offers an easy connection for anyone who has ever felt out of place, new immigrant from the Dominican Republic or no.
And even though it's written in the main character's teenage Spanglish and hip hop slang, you'll be surprised to realize how much Spanish and hip hop was already in your brain, as if from osmosis from watching television or from the changing demographics of the United States itself.
Pariguayos: Spanish Slang for Wallflowers or Party Watchers
Author Junot Diaz peppers his writing with well-researched history of the Dominican Republic, high brow nods to obscure science fiction and Spanglish gems like, "pariguayo" which is broken English, slang in Spanish for a party watcher, a wallflower. To define other words, like "diabluras," check out the Urban Dictionary.
The Character of Oscar Wao: A Tenacious Wallflower
The main character of The Brief Wondrous Life of Ocar Wao is Oscar De Leon, a pariguayo among pariguayos. A fat kid with an oversized vocabulary, a penchant for role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and sci-fi books like Dune. He has the unfortunate addition of having the romantic heart of some fantasy Caribbean knight, if there could ever have been such a thing. He falls in love over and over, but gets precisely nowhere. And when he does, the family's fuku or curse follows like a snarling, foaming at the mouth rabid dog. Junot Diaz points out that the word Dominican comes from the Latin Domini cani, or dogs of god.
Dominican Family Culture
As the first son in a family from the Dominican Republic he's expected to have game, to be a hit with the ladies, to score constantly, but of course, he's a total failure. This is why he's appealing: who hasn't tanked? He eats loads of lechon (roast suckling pig) like a good Dominican son, but is otherwise stuggling to make his family proud.
His mother, Beli, (who has the family's fuku as her own backstory) is one of the most frightening and tragic heroines of modern American fiction. Oscar's sister Lola describes their mother as having a "smile like a lion." Beware the Dominican madre scorned.
The Dominican Tolkien: Caribbean Sci-Fi
The one thing Oscar can do is write. He has aspirations to become the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. In the context of the book and of Junot Diaz's obvious affection for the character of Oscar, this seems plausible. Like a way of zafa-ing the family fuku. (According to Diaz, zafa is the anti-fuku, a method of averting the evil eye.) Whether or not Oscar in the end succeds is left unanswered.
And "unanswered" is the success of immigration to Nuevo Yol itself. Left behind is a what Diaz calls the "old school Dominican" culture of superstition and magic, of crushing dictatorship under Trujillo. But the size and fit of the new -- a degree for Oscar from Rutgers University, the promise of a true democracy and streets paved with golden opportunities -- is uncertain.
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