50books_poc | 1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Reply)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

I thought this book was fantastic. I highly recommend it!

My favourite thing about this book was the prose. It's half in English, one quarter in Spanish and one quarter in geek. I'm fluent in English, much less so in classic sci-fi, comic books, RPG's and Tolkien, and not at all in Spanish. It didn't matter. Context is everything, and I picked up new words as I went along. The prose was bursting with life and energy. I'd start a chapter and get sucked in by the narration; wouldn't be able to put the book down until that section was over. The writing is sometimes irreverent and satirical (the dictator of the Dominican Republic is referred to as 'the Failed Cattle Thief' and 'Fuckface') and sometimes very moving. It made me think of an older post by

cupidsbow. She talks in one part of the post about the power of writing in the vernacular vs. 'literary' English in fiction (and fanfiction).

So, the story. It's a multi-generational tale of the de Leon family, who are under a particularly awful curse, or 'fuku.' Whether you believe in the supernatural or not is irrelevant. The author leaves it to the reader to decide if the events that play out are from the fuku, or are due to the misfortune that falls on everyday people living under a brutal dictatorship. The story starts out in New Jersey with Oscar de Leon, the protagonist, but also contains sequences about the earlier lives of his mother and grandfather in the Dominican Republic.

Oscar is not a likeable protagonist, he does little that made me like him, but he did have my sympathy in certain moments. The narrator, Yunior, seems to be a loose autobiographical stand-in for Junot Diaz, although I haven't Googled any interviews for the author and may be completely wrong. (ETA: Wrong!) There is a lot of sexism in the narration and in the story which Junot Diaz says is cultural, and it seems to be as damaging to the men as it is to the women. Because of this, it was a relief to be able to read the sections that were built around Lola, Oscar's sister, and Beli, their mother; to get more of the women's lives and thoughts, even through Yunior's narration.

The way that the story unfolds is great, being educated in Dominican history was also great, and after you are done the book you may like to read this review by Abigail Nussbaum (contain spoilers), which is much, much more interesting and in-depth than mine. (I got the link from an earlier review in this community. Thank you!)