Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoAuthor(s): Junot Díaz
Editor(s):
Illustrator(s):
Publication Date: 2007
Plot Summary:
Oscar is a fat, ugly, geeky-to-the-max Dominican American sci-fi nerd living in Paterson, New Jersey. He and his family are afflicted by the legendary Dominican curse “fukú.”
In Oscar’s case, fukú (pronounced "foo-KOO" in the Audible audiobook version) doesn't just mean that girls never fall head over heels for him; thanks to fukú, they all but fall head over heels running in the opposite direction. Oscar’s “friends,” too, reject him. He is highly intelligent, but socially inept in his demonstrations of intelligence, most notably his diction. He loves comic books, superheroes, sci-fi, writing, RPGs, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The upshot of his permanent status as a social outcast is that when a girl finally does return his affection, he willingly dies so he can have a single weekend of happiness with her (and not die a virgin).
Review:
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is narrated by Yunior, Oscar’s friend/former college roommate who enters the story as the would-be boyfriend of Oscar’s older sister, Lola. The narrative structure is nonlinear, bouncing from Oscar’s story to Lola’s to their mother’s to Oscar’s to his grandfather’s, etc. The narratives for each character go in roughly chronological order; they're just all mixed together.
One way to think of the novel's structure is as a group of interlocking circles. Each circle represents a character's journey through the tragic cycle of abuse. Beauty is beaten, survives the attack, and heals into a new and scarred beauty, only to return to the abuser, but then survive again--unless and until, one day, they don't. Aside from Yunior, every character in the novel has at least one of these relationships. Thanks to the plentiful dark humor, the book isn't a tearjerker (depending on how easily you cry), but I wouldn't call it cheery, either.
The family story hinges on the bloody reign of Trujillo over the D.R. (Dominican Republic) in the mid-1900s.
Oscar’s grandfather, Abelard, is a highly respected doctor who falls into disgrace when he refuses to hand his beautiful, innocent teenage daughter over to Trujillo to be raped. Abelard spends many years in prison dying a slow and painful death as a result. After his initial imprisonment, his grieving wife gives birth to the couple’s third daughter, Belicia, and commits suicide within a few months.
The three daughters are sent to live with different relatives, and only Belicia, whom no one wants because she is the darkest of the three, survives. Even Belicia is thought to be dead, but she ends up sold into child slavery instead. She is cruelly abused, most notably when her new “father” deliberately pours a pan of scalding oil on her back.
Abelard’s cousin, La Inca, somehow learns that Beli might not be dead after all, so she finds the girl and rescues her. Beli grows into a drop-dead gorgeous young teenager. Her peers at school bully her, while she—understandably—is so starved for male attention that she becomes notoriously promiscuous. Her most significant relationship is with “The Gangster,” who wins her over because he threatens, controls, and abuses her. Unfortunately, after Beli learns that she is pregnant, The Gangster’s wife shows up. Even worse, the furious wife is Trujillo’s sister.
Beli is kidnapped, beaten, and left for dead. She loses the baby, but not her life. However, when Trujillo’s goons realize that they’d failed to kill their victim, they come after her again, prompting La Inca to send Beli all the way to the U.S. for the sake of the girl’s safety. There, Beli marries another abusive man, with whom she has Lola and then Oscar before the man abandons her.
Beli becomes a hard, cruel, controlling, downright mean mother, neglectful and abusive herself, particularly towards Lola. Lola is as fiery and independent as her mother, so she runs away from home after Beli becomes ill with cancer and escalates her abuse against the girl. Lola’s love for Oscar, whom she calls “Mister,” draws her back, however—a cycle that continues in various forms until Oscar’s death.
By the time Oscar is in college, he’s been so thoroughly rejected by everyone that he’s seriously depressed. In high school, he had developed a habit of falling madly in love with unattainable girls who were kind enough to talk to him but would always go back to their abusive boyfriends. Oscar carries this pattern into college. His continued virginity intensifies the depression, and he tries to commit suicide. Even in suicide, he fails.
Lola’s and Beli’s distress convinces Oscar not to repeat his suicide attempt, so he reluctantly goes back to living. On a trip to the D.R., he meets a semi-retired prostitute named Ybòn. He falls madly in love with her, despite her on-again, off-again boyfriend being a corrupt cop. The cop sends men to beat Oscar to death. Like his mother, Oscar is left for dead in a cane field, but miraculously lives (though with serious injuries). Also like Beli, he is whisked out of the country as soon as possible because of the attempted murder.
Ybòn was Oscar’s greatest love, and he realizes that her repeated rejections of him are out of fear for his safety, not because she doesn’t love him. He manages to get back to the D.R., where he writes copiously, staves off the cop’s henchmen, wears Ybòn down until she spends that magical weekend with him, and then accepts his death at the hands of the henchmen.
From a mixed-race studies perspective, Oscar and his family exemplify the complexity of the color hierarchy in Hispaniola and especially in the D.R. (Refresher: in the D.R. the hierarchy goes 1. blanco, 2. trigueño, 3. indio, 4. mulatto, 5. moreno, 6. negro.) Beli’s eldest sister is beautiful and blonde; Beli is not, and their prospects after the death of their mother are starkly different as a result. Oscar, dark like his mother, self-identifies as a “nigger” in the U.S. There’s discussion of someone being called a “moreno” instead of an “indio.” Also, the specter of the family's “Haitian”—the ultimate “negro”—connections looms.
I love Yunior’s narrative voice in this text! He frequently refers to Oscar as “homeboy,” Lola and sometimes Beli as “homegirl,” and Beli as “our girl.” He unabashedly addresses the reader directly. He’s got a rather wry and dry sense of humor, and as he reflects on past events and editorializes on the parts he has played in them, he often reveals regret and increased maturity.
More Resources:
- "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (Wikipedia)
- "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz" (Goodreads)
- www.junotdiaz.com (author site)