THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO: Of curses and blessing

Junot Díaz has something important to tell us. He also has something funny and entertaining – but above all, he has a major talent to display on his latest novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, which was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The title character, Oscar Wao, is one of those unforgettable literary figures, like Holden Caulfield or Oliver Twist, for instance. A character that becomes bigger than his book, that transcends narrative and becomes a human being. Early in the novel he is described as `not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about – he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock’. He also hasn’t had much luck when it comes to love. Early in his life, Oscar Wao had a brief period of luck with girls but it has long past. And he may suffer from an ancient curse called fukú that has fallen upon his family for centuries.

In order to tell Oscar’s familiar history, Díaz uses this curse as both a device and an excuse. The whole narrative maybe focused on the journey of fukú until it reaches the protagonist. As such, “The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao” becomes a bigger picture. This reminds of another Pultizer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Middlesex”, in which by telling the journey of a gene, the writer revisits a whole century and an immigrant saga.

“Oscar Wao” is also an immigrant family saga, and here is where lie the most serious and political tone of the novel. It is interesting that most of the Dominican history is told in footnotes – as if the history itself was, for the rest of the world, nothing more than a footnote.

Díaz has a major talent to make political comment is a subtle way. `(…) the First American Occupation of the DR, which ran from 1916 to 1924 (You didn’t know we were occupied twice in the twentieth century? Don’t worry, when you have kids they won’t know the U. S. occupied Iraq either’.

“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is at the same time both exhilarating, funny and political. And this is one of its major qualities. Díaz makes you laugh, cry and think while entertaining you. He has one of the most assured voices of contemporary literature – a real blessing.