So, I actually just spent like half an hour recording this video, only to find that I
had zoomed in super close on my mouth.
So, little bit frustrated right now.
Today, I'm going to be talking about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and
yes, I did figure out how to pronounce his name.
Go me!
I also want to mention because I know you all are staring at this little, awful tear
in my book, I did not do that, I'm not a book abuser.
It's a used copy and that was there when I got it.
Though I do think there is mustard on here and that might actually be mine.
Yeah, okay, moving on.
The Brief Life of Oscar Wao follow a young man named Oscar as he navigates life as a
nerdy, fat, generally unloved character who is obsessed with J.R.R.
Tolkien.
Aside from that, I don't think I will be able to explain this book to you guys, so I'm just
going to go ahead and read you the blurb on the back.
"Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams
of becoming the Dominican J.R.R.
Tolkien and, most of all, finding love.
But Oscar may never get what he wants.
Blame the fuku, a curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on
their epic journey from the Dominican Republic to the United States and back."
I'm not really sure if that helped at all, but I thought I would just go ahead and break
this down by what I liked about it and what I did not like about it.
I read this for a 21st Century American Lit class and one thing that was frustrating a
lot of people was the fact that Diaz uses a lot of geek culture references throughout
the novel.
I actually really, really enjoyed this, especially because the main reference he was using was
Lord of the Rings.
It shows up throughout this novel.
He kind of uses it as a lense through which Oscar views the world, which I thought was
really cool.
I also really enjoyed the fact that Diaz alludes to Tolkien's writings throughout the novel
in the same way that most authors allude to, say, classical literature.
One thing that we talked about in class was that this may be an attempt by Diaz to kind
of redefine the literary canon and redefine what it means to be well read.
I also really enjoyed the discussion of liminality that takes place throughout the novel.
In case you don't know what liminality is, it's basically a fancy way of saying that
a person or community exists on a "threshold" between two worlds or cultures.
Oscar's liminal state comes from the fact that he is neither accepted as a white American
or as a typical Dominican.
Throughout the novel, poor Oscar is constantly being told that he is to fat and nerdy and
bad with women to be a Dominican.
They're like, 'Dude, you're not a player, you can't possibly be one of us.'
But at the same time, his skin color is brought up constantly, he's very, very obviously not
a typical white American, so he exists in his own liminal state.
I personally like to think that that's why he writes so much, because in writing he can
create his own space.
So, if you've read the novel, comment below: What do you think about that?
Of course, with the discussion of liminality also comes a discussion of immigrant identity
and because that's what I'm writing my thesis on, but in Indian-American literature, this
was exciting to me that this was talked about in the novel.
There's some really cool comments in here about, kind of stereotypical expectations
of what me imagine, like, Latino Americans to be and I think that's a really cool discussion
that I enjoy reading about.
And the final thing that I really liked about this novel is that the narration is indistinct
and what I mean by that is that we have no idea, really, who's narrating.
Here are the three possibilities that we talked about in my class: #1 is that it's Junior,
a character from the novel who is writing kind of a memoir of sorts and is narrating
his memoir of Oscar's life.
#2 is that this is Oscar writing a fictional novel about Junior writing a novel about Oscar's
life.
#3 is that there is a kind of internal Diaz, not the author, necessarily, Diaz, but a Diaz
created within the text simply to serve as narrator.
Because there are a few moments when he kind of breaks out and specifically addresses the
audience or the reader.
So, I don't know, I personally like that one.
As you can imagine, quite a few people found this very, very frustrating, but this was
something I enjoyed.
Generally, I don't like indistinct narratives because that makes me question the reliability
of the narrator, but for some reason this really seemed to work in this case.
The one thing that I did not like about this novel is that the plot is not linear, but
at the same time, it's not non-linear.
Oscar's plotline is fairly linear.
Regardless of who the narrator is, they're starting at Oscar's childhood and going up
through his adulthood, and that I liked.
That made sense to me.
However, this very linear narrative is broken up by chapters about this mother and his sister
and those two are not linear.
Their timeline kind of bounces around, they reference each other, they reference themselves,
they kind of fold back in on themselves.
I'm not a huge fan of experimental fiction.
I kind of like to know where my plot is going to go, or have a general idea of what I think
is going to happen, and by breaking up the plot like this is just kind of threw me off
and that's not, just, not something I prefer in a novel.
Overall, I ended up giving this novel three stars and I can definitely see why it was
a Pulitzer Prize winner, just wasn't a fan of the form.
There is one thing I want to mention, though, before you all run out and go buy this novel.
And that is the fact that there is a bit of sexual content and kind of graphic violence
in here, so if that's not your thing, I don't know if I would read this.
Diaz is not writing for gore factor, or shock factor, but he also does not spare you any
of the details in the few torture scenes that are in here and then some of the kind of sexual
things that are a little bit meh.
So, just be aware of that going in and you won't be as shocked as I was!
That is my review.
If you guys have read this novel, please let me know what you thought in the comments below,
because everyone I talk to, it seems to be fairly split on whether they like it or not,
whether they think it's, it's worth the Pulitzer.
That is another thing.
A lot of people, a lot of critics haven't been so kind on that front, so I would love
to know what you guys thought.
Alright, well, that's all I have for today.
More reviews hopefully coming soon and I will see you next time.
Bye!