{"id":13016,"date":"2011-06-02T09:09:51","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T13:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=13016"},"modified":"2014-05-17T16:02:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T20:02:19","slug":"the-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by-junot-diaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by-junot-diaz\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot D\u00edaz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brief<\/a>Here are a few new things I learned from\u00a0Junot D\u00edaz<\/a>‘s\u00a02008 Pulitzer Prize-winner<\/a> that many of you already read long ago …<\/p>\n

I get why\u00a0Junot D\u00edaz’s “guiltiest pleasure of all”<\/a>\u00a0is Naoki Urasawa’s 18-volume manga,\u00a0Monster<\/em><\/a>. I’m right there with him!<\/p>\n

I now recognize the splattered gruesome-ness of the cover.<\/p>\n

I understand why D\u00edaz\u00a0deserved the Pulitzer. Who else can go so\u00a0seamlessly and effortlessly\u00a0from Toto to Dungeons & Dragons to Scooby-Doo to Elvish … and spout perfect political theory, rant about colonialism, and enlighten you about “linguistic and computational complexity”?<\/p>\n

I rejoice once more for Jonathan Davis who narrates Oscar Wao<\/em>\u00a0in the audible version, who rightfully\u00a0won Audible.com’s 4th Annual Tournament of Champions of Audiobooks<\/a> earlier\u00a0this year with his recitation of Jack Weatherford’s\u00a0<\/a>Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0Davis works the same fluid magic with\u00a0Oscar and company.<\/p>\n

But back to Wao (WOW!). In spite of Oscar’s name on the cover, the contents are shared by his extended family, including the many unrequited loves of his life. Narrated by Yunior (who I’m assuming is the same Yunior from D\u00edaz’s short story collection, Drown<\/a><\/em>), the story\u00a0begins and ends in the Dominican Republic with Oscar’s first and last amors.<\/p>\n

Dovetailed with Oscar’s endless search for love\u00a0\u2013 from his 7-year-old Dominican Casanova self, to his rotund New Jersey teenaged years obsessed with role-playing games, to his depressed overweight adult incarnation scribbling hundreds of pages of fantasy novels (not to mention his expansive erudite vocabulary) \u2013 is an intricate family saga that spans two countries, three generations, multiple decades, and the heinous reign of “Rafael Le\u00f3nidas Trujillo Molina, the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated.”<\/p>\n

From the barest distance, Yunior \u2013\u00a0as Oscar’s friend and short-term roommate who should have been Oscar’s brother-in-law if only he could keep his manhood from wandering\u00a0\u2013 omnisciently fills in Oscar’s family tree. Oscar’s protective older sister Lola is a feisty, independent woman forced to grow up too soon by a mother incapable of showing the love her daughter craves. Mother Beli with secrets of her own, is dying from cancer, but determined to protect her children any way she can. And Oscar and Lola’s waiting grandmother La Inca back in DR\u00a0is the holder of an ancestral nightmare her grandchildren will never know, but from which we readers cannot turn away.<\/p>\n

The resulting collage of legends, memories, curses, and history is as gorgeous as it is horrific. Brief, yes. Wondrous, yes. And shattering, funny, wrenching, inspiring, tortuous … and finally, hopeful. “The beauty! The beauty,” the final page hauntingly echoes …<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2007<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are a few new things I learned from\u00a0Junot D\u00edaz‘s\u00a02008 Pulitzer Prize-winner that many of you already read long ago … I get why\u00a0Junot D\u00edaz’s “guiltiest pleasure of all”\u00a0is Naoki Urasawa’s 18-volume manga,\u00a0Monster. I’m right there with him! I now recognize the splattered gruesome-ness of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,90,6],"tags":[6608,2053,58,10,135,25,899,91,13,129,39,42,92,818],"class_list":["post-13016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-caribbean-american","category-fiction","tag-bookdragon","tag-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao","tag-coming-of-age","tag-family","tag-grandparents","tag-immigration","tag-jonathan-davis","tag-junot-diaz","tag-love","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-series","tag-series-yunior-de-las-casas","tag-staci-snell"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot D\u00edaz - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by-junot-diaz\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot D\u00edaz - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here are a few new things I learned from\u00a0Junot D\u00edaz‘s\u00a02008 Pulitzer Prize-winner that many of you already read long ago … I get why\u00a0Junot D\u00edaz’s “guiltiest pleasure of all”\u00a0is Naoki Urasawa’s 18-volume manga,\u00a0Monster. 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