The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

A brief (not really) review by Jay

What can I say about this book to give it great justice? I really loved it. It was a refreshing tale that takes you deep into the life of a man struggling to make the most of life because he didn’t encompass the characteristics of manliness designated to his culture and competing against a family curse or fukú. Not only did this story pull you into Oscar de León's, the main character, life, it also allows you to enter the mind/world of others in his life such as Oscar’s sister, Lola, his mother, Beli, his grandfather, Abelard, and the narrator of the book, Yunior. It makes sense that in order to get the full picture of Oscar; you need to know the background and histories of his family. Typically in Hispanic culture (please excuse me if I am wrong), family is heavily empathized so can you really tell a story about a Dominican boy without telling the story of his family? Also, since I am in the counseling field, I truly believe and have experienced that the dynamics of the family system and how the other members contribute to it can allow great insight about the person with your current focus. Thanks Junot Diaz for doing this whether it was intentional or not. This book was 335 pages long and I was able to finish it within a 24 hour period reading for 2 then 3 hours. I couldn’t put the book down to pace myself. I will admit, I am a fast reader, at times skimming over lines that were making me lose focus but all in all, the book was interesting enough to keep my attention.

I don’t want to give too much of this book away because I believe it is worth the read, but I will give my reactions to it in general. As the reader, I felt a lot of sympathy for Oscar. I found myself wanting to fix him, thinking to myself ‘All you need to do is this; all you need to do is that.’ My instinct to do this was reflective of the what everyone close to Oscar, including Yunior, wanting to do the same. Lola would comment on his weight and looks and give advice on how to fix it. Yunior went a more extreme route by actually forcing Oscar to take action but because Yunior’s motivation wasn’t in the right place, when Oscar gave up, Yunior gave up on Oscar not understanding the extent to which Oscar was giving up on himself. Throughout his life all he heard was everything that was wrong with him and why it’s wrong but no one told him what was right, commendable, and good about him so he could use his strengths to his advantage. His primary goal in life seems to be to have sex but ultimately, Oscar just wanted to love and have that love reciprocated. It took me until close the end of the book to come to this realization. If Oscar wanted sex, he definitely could have gotten it. The rite of passage for many boys today happens earlier and earlier in life and I’ve heard many stories of a male relative simply paying a sex worker to give a young boy his first experience. I realized that receiving sex in this manner was not desirable or simply enough for Oscar once he met a woman who had sex for money and he choose to woo her instead of paying for what he wanted. 

Oscar wanted love and this want for love paralleled the same want for love his mother wanted in her youth.  I couldn’t help but to notice the similarities between Oscar and his mother. Both wrapped their mind around this notion of love and never let it go even when it became clearly harmful, risky, and death became the certain consequence if they continued with this idea of love everlasting. There is a turning point in young Beli’s life where she learns she must fight to live so that she can ultimately give birth to Lola and Oscar in her future. Once I completed the book, I questioned what the purpose was if it only resulted in Oscar following the same events. Interestingly, prepubescent Beli had the same reputation, appearance and undesirable personality as Oscar did in relation to how people looked down on them because the way they looked, their experiences, and the way their personality and interests didn’t align with what was expected of them within society. Beli had better luck because apparently being Dominican, milk and puberty does the body good! Beli’s experience, to me, shows what potentially could have happened if Oscar suddenly became this person that oozed nothing but sex from them. Oddly enough, even though this didn’t happen to Oscar, he still ended up in the same situation as his mother did when she was younger. This theme of appearance is very central within the book and this family as you will see.

I know within the story, fukú plays a major part in the many misfortunes of this family but also there are appearances of zafa, the counterspell to fukú. Eventually this counterspell fails but the instances that it appears are interesting and really play into the uncertainty of superstitions within a culture. This curse is central within this culture so reading this book, you have to open your mind and be accepting that this is realistic part of the Dominican culture and not allow your personal beliefs block you from getting the full effect of how shitty it is to have this string of bad luck in your family. Imagine being basically doomed from birth to experience some hardship. One could say that having this mindset from the beginning can influence you to accept the circumstances brought upon you instead of actively trying to change it, which clearly happened with Oscar constantly giving up on making changes. I would definitely be one of those people but in order to enjoy this story and immerse myself into this family and culture, I have to set that aside and you should too. Go read this book and get personal with Oscar de León, the hopeless romantic plagued with the fukú.