May 20 2008
Where For Art Thou, Junot Diaz?
A fresh copy of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao arrived today, newly emblazoned with a shiny gold sticker identifying it as 2008′s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. And, let me tell you, if ever a book deserved a gold sticker, it is this one.
Many a gush-worthy title graces our shelves, but this one is something special. A fast-talking, first generation Dominican Romeo named Yunior narrates the story of the cursed Cabral family and their tragically flawed son Oscar. Poor Oscar. Socially awkward to the extreme, grotesquely obese and obsessed with science fiction, he seems doomed by the family curse, a powerful, Caribbean force called “fuku,” to a life without friends, without girls (downright blasphemy for any good Dominican male) and without hope.
A similar dose of family fuku befell his mother, Beli, back in the Dominican Republic. A formidable, beautiful (too beautiful for her own good) Dominicana, she gets involved with a sleazy minion working for the country’s evil, crazy dictator Trujillo and is forced to run for her life to New Jersey. Only the divine blessings of the Cabral matriarch, La Inca, and the critical, supernatural intervention of a magical, golden-eyed mongoose saves the family from total devastation. (I am, admittedly, a sucker for magical realism.)
I finished this and immediately went on a quest for everything Junot Diaz has ever written. He is a professor of writing at MIT here in Cambridge, and I can only hope that my guardian angel mongoose will intervene and steer him into the bookstore. I think I saw him on the Red Line the other day, but I can’t be sure. For now, though, I must content myself with his hilarious, devastating and near perfect prose.
Read more: Author Crush, Book Reviews, Caribbean, Fiction, NewsNicole -- Nicole hails from metropolian Conway, South Carolina. While she's not busy doing Southern things like eating biscuits and heavily buttered grits (often together), she likes to travel to other countries and eat their food. Her favorite exotic treats include: Icelandic Skyr, South Indian dosa, British Jaffa Cakes, and Austrian strudel.
