The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Presentation by ：Priyanka Amin, Deanne Arimoto, and Katelyn Zhang

By Junot Diaz

Thesis/ArgumentIn The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz uses the Dominican American experience to showcase the struggles of diasporic families and the intergenerational differences that stem from being the “outsider”.  

Junot DiázBorn in Santo Domingo in 1968Emigrated to Parlin, New Jersey

in 1974Completed his BA in English at

Rutgers CollegeInvolved with Demarest Hall, a

creative-writing, living-learning, residence hall, and in various student organizations

MFA from Cornell University in 1995Fiction editior at the Boston

Review and creative writing professor at MIT

Junot Diaz (cont)Active in the Dominican American

community: founding member of the Voices of Our Nation Arts Writing Workshop, focused on writers of color

First used character Yunior when applying for MFA program and later inspired other stories

Junot Diaz (cont)Díaz said: "I can safely say I've seen the US from the bottom up...I may be a success story as an individual. But if you adjust the knob and just take it back one setting to the family unit, I would say my family tells a much more complicated story. It tells the story of two kids in prison. It tells the story of enormous poverty, of tremendous difficulty.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module.html?mod=0&pkg=29042008&seg=4

Major ThemesIndividual within the DicatorshipDiasporaLove and ViolenceMasculinity/Feminism

Stereotypical Dominican gender roles

Magic and curses: Fuku vs Zafa

TrujilloRafael Trujillo was born in 1891He became president of the

Dominican Republic in 1930 through political maneuvering and torture.

He officially held the office until 1938, when he chose a puppet predecessor.

He resumed his official position from 1942 to 1952, but continued to rule by force until his assassination on May 30, 1961

During Trujillo's campaign, he organized a secret police force to torture and murder supporters of the opposing candidate.

Trujillo (cont)Trujillo used a hurricane as an excuse to impose martial law on all citizens

renamed Santo Domingo "Ciudad Trujillo."took total control of all major industries and

financial institutions"He who does not know how to deceive does

not know how to rule."In 1937, he orchestrated the massacre of

thousands of Haitian immigrantsfamily came into enormous wealth10 Siblings, Mirabal Sisters → all true

Effect of Dictatorship“He wrote in the crabbed handwriting of a future poet-revolutionary: I’d like to see our country be a democracia like the United States. I wish we would stop having dictators. Also I believe that it was Trujillo  who killed Galindez. That’s all it took. The next day both he and the teacher were gone” (96)

“Two Truji-lios in one lifetime - what in carajo else could it be?” (152)

Diaspora“Things had been bad between us all year.

How could they not have been? She was my Old World Dominican mother and I was her only daughter, the one she had raised up herself with the help of nobody, which meant it was her duty to keep me crushed under her heel.” (55)

“Dude used to say he was cursed, used to say this a lot, and if I’d really been old-school Dominican I would have (a) listened to this idiot, and then (b) run the other way.” (71)

Love and Violence1. Beli and Lola“Most of the time she just looked at me with the stink eye, but

sometimes without warning she would grab me by my throat and hang on until I pred her fingers from me. She didnt bother taking to me unless it was to make death threats.” (61)

2. Oscar and Ana“He didn’t care that he would more than likely be put away

forever, or that niggers like him got ass and mouth raped in jail, or that if the cops picked him up and found the gun they’d send his tio’s ass up the river for parole violation. He didn’t care about nada that night.” (47)

3. Oscar and Ybon“He [Oscar] told them that it was only because of her love that

he’d been able to do the thing that he had done, the thing they could no longer stop, told them if they killed him they would probably feel nothing [...] and then they would sense him waiting for them on the other side and over there he wouldn’t be no fatboy or dork or kid no girl had ever loved; over there he’d be a hero, an avenger.” (321-322)

Gender Roles: Masculinity“Sophomore year Oscar

found himself weighing in at a whopping 245 (260 when he was depressed, which was often) and it had become clear to everybody, especially his family, that he’d become the neighborhood pariguayo. He had none of the Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldn’t have pulled a girl if his life depended on it” (19-20)

Gender Roles: Femininity“I was fea, I was a worthless, I was an idiota. From ages two to thirteen I believed her and because I believed her I was the perfect hija. I was the one cooking, cleaning, doing the dishes...” (56)

“Beli, who’d been waiting for something exactly like her body her whole life, was sent over the moon by what she now knew. By the undeniable consequences of her desirability which was, in its own way, Power.” (94)

Fuku vs. Zafa“Two Truji-lios in one lifetime -

what in carajo else could it be? But other heads question the logic, arguing that Beli’s survival must be evidence to the contrary. Cursed people, after all, tend not to drag themselves out of canefields... ” (152)

“It wasn’t long after that visit that Socorro realized that she was pregnant. With Abelard’s Third and Final Daughter. Zafa or Fuku? You tell me.” (242).

“It was the curse that made me do it, you know. I don’t believe in that shit, Oscar. That’s our parents’ shit. It’s ours too, he said” (194).

Class ActivityBreak into groups of 2-3How could fuku and zafa fit into your lives?

What experiences could prompt the question, “Fuku or Zafa?”

Personify your personal ideas of fuku/zafa as super villain/hero.

Draw your villain fuku and hero zafa as parts of a comic strip or just as characters on their own.

Prepare to share!

Thank you for Listening and

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