The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The book was authored by Junot Diaz, a Dominican-American writer. The author created a story through the characters as they went about their daily lives in New Jersey or in the Washington Heights. Throughout the narrative, Diaz, treated the challenges of poverty, immigration, and legacy of Trujillo autocracy in the Dominican Republic. The narrative describes the plight of immigrants in the United States. A good example of the characters extensively used by Diaz is Oscar de Leon. He is an intellectually inclined person despite being obese. His mum is tyrannical and severe and does not live with his father. Every person battle with poverty, drug abuse and crime. The book describes the life of Oscar since his tender age.

A practical historical figure, the autocrat of the Dominican Republic since 1930 up to the time he was assassinated in 1961, Rafael Trujillo, is also an essential character in the narrative. More heartache results from the dictator’s actions throughout the book, either indirectly, as his censorship hinders the honesty of other characters regarding their past or their heritage, or directly as can be seen when his thugs beat Oscar and Beli [1]. Yunior who refers to him as ‘The failed Cattle Thief’ describes Trujillo as the master villain of every fantasy narrative, complete with a preoccupation with sexy females and narcissistic complex. There are myriad flaws of the Trujillo regimes as pointed out by the novel. Every character in the novel attempts to overcome the problems caused by his administration to Dominical citizens.  The first group to migrate to the United States comprised well-off persons and individuals from small and urban-town classes.

Fuku, a type of curse in the novel by Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, can be used to illustrate the disgusting dictatorship of Raphael Trujillo as well as his acts that victimized his people. The family curse begins with Abelard Cabral, a wealthy surgeon with two beautiful daughters. During the reign of the Trujillo, it was common practice for the dictator to demand sexual relations with any woman he chose, and it appears he has his eye on Jacquelyn, Ablelard’s oldest daughter. One common explanation for why Abelard was jailed for slander was because he loved his daughter enough to try to keep her out of the Trujillo’s hands. It is believed the Trujillo put a curse on the family because he couldn’t get Jacquelyn. Apart from Beli, all members of the Cabal family, including the head servant and Abelard’s mistress, are mysteriously killed.

The suffering revealed by the characters in the novel is a true reflection of the difficulties faced by people under the regime of Trujillo, which started in the 1930s. The autocracy continued up to 1960s when the Rafael Trujillo was assassinated by the rebels in 1961s. This killing evoked an economic and political and economic turbulence. As a result, the United States military intervened to solve the problem. Due to the prevailing unrest in the Dominican Republic, most citizens migrated to America. In 1960 the number of immigrants was 12,000. However, it rapidly increased after the situation and reached 350,000 in 1990. The Dominican Republican comprised 2 percent of the total number of foreign immigrants in the U.S in 2012; 960,000 individuals in a population of 40.8 million people.

Most characters in the novel question their identity, wrestling and experimenting with who they want to be and they are. The book reveals how such test is piloted and influenced by both external communities and internal factors. The characters struggle to remain true and fit their Latino or Dominican heritage. The book shows the characters in difficult situations while interacting with others since they wish to be true to their origins.  Diaz shows evidence of this struggle in the case of nicknames used by Yunior and Oscar[2].  The latter uses a nickname that symbolizes his incapability to fit in with other Latinos as himself, while the former’s nickname reveals his desire to display the real Dominican person rather than risk desertion by revealing his real personality. The narrative also comprises the tensions inherent to living as a Dominican America child of foreigners in the 20thcentury. Characters of the second generation such as Lola and Yunior struggles to be Dominicans enough and not too much Dominican. Diaz came up with a linguistic style which could not only be viewed as American and intricated the view of Latino identity and isolated from Latino identity.

When the Dominicans arrived in the U.S., they faced numerous challenges: language barriers, social stigmatization and bureaucracy. High school students from Dominican Republic faced numerous problems at the Department of Education in the New York City. According to studies, People tend to typecast individuals from Dominicans as being black skinned than Puerto Ricans and foreground their African influenced facial characteristics as well as hair texture. As a result, the Dominicans experience stigmatization in these states just like Haitians in their country.

Hierarchies based on race are inescapable in the Dominican Republic. When they are on the Island, some people find it worth to live in America despite being perceived as second-class citizens. Diaz also writes about the discrimination based on the race between Dominicans and Haitians, calling out Trujillo for the genocide executed to Haitians, the elimination of Dominicans-Haitians from formal records of the government and the hatred of the skin color of the Haitians. A comparison and contrast of the racial discrimination that Oscar faces as a black color in the United States and the one Haiti people face in the DR, the author reveals colonial mindsets in which the afflicted people lash out to depress others, and he integrates his novel to  activist measures for enhancing the life of Haitian-Dominican associations in the actual world.

Although the novel is broadly applicable to coming-of-age narrative, it is also strongly rooted Latino experiences. The whole narrative is steeped in the experience of Diaz regarding the Dominican American culture, from the Yunior’s language to cultural customs historical information and family dynamics that Diaz integrates in the novel. Diaz begins by educating the audience about the experiences of Dominicans’ experiences in the America, back from their colonial days up to their modern Dominican American life.

The narrative by Diaz also addresses the issues of free will, especially as it plays with the perspective of Dominicans concerning destiny. The novel portrays people in the Dominican culture as having a substantially small control over their lives. Instead, the antagonistic influences of the zafa (counter spell) and fuku (curse) command the events in the life of a person. Human can only hope to shun from going against principle of fuku, therefore evoking more misfortune, and try to lay a zafa to safeguard themselves and trheir relatives. The family of de Leon family particularly Oscar face extremes of both forces; several fuku incidences as well as blessings of Zafa over the course of their lives. The author shows the advantages and drawbacks of such outlook on free will and destiny.

The people who had left Dominican Republic had gone due to the deteriorating economic situation. However, in the recent years there has been a rapid economic growth and improvement in several critical results recently. The rate of improvement is among the strongest growths in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region [3]. The available record shows that there has been an annual growth at an average of 7% in 1990s and the growth rate in 2000s was 5%. The growth rose again since 2014 and it went up to 7% annually again. There are levels of unemployment are significantly low; approximately 2.7%in 2014. The annual growth rate in this state could potentially attract the people back home. In addition, the constant problem experienced by the immigrants in the United states could discourage people from living there considering that there are better living conditions in their home country.

In conclusion, the author of the book plunge the readers in the tumultuous live of the main character and the story of family at large, presenting with authentic warmth and dazzling humor and energy and inform the Dominican-American experience, and finally the continuous human ability to persevere in the time of embarrassment and losses. A factual literary victory, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao reaffirms Diaz as among the best and most successful voices of the prevailing time.

Bibliography

Díaz, Junot, 1968-. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York :Riverhead Books, 2007.

GONZÁLEZ, CHRISTOPHER. “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” In Reading Junot Diaz, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt19705td.6.

OECD, Scalabrini Migration Center. ” The Dominican Republic’s migration landscape.” Interrelations between Public Policies, Migration and Development in the Dominican Republic. (2017).

[1] CHRISTOPHER GONZÁLEZ, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” in Reading Junot Diaz, 2017, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt19705td.6.

[2] Díaz, Junot, 1968-. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York :Riverhead Books, 2007.

[3] OECD, Scalabrini Migration Center. ” The Dominican Republic’s migration landscape.” Interrelations between Public Policies, Migration and Development in the Dominican Republic. (2017).