I absolutely loved Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I never thought a story about the childhood I lived would make an interesting novel, but I was completely wrong. Junot wrote the book I wish I could have written, except that my main character’s family would have been Cuban and their dictator and tormenter would certainly have been Fidel instead of Junot’s Trujillo. Not since the Sopranos has New Jersey been spotlighted in such an authentic and tragic way (sadly, this is the only view of NJ most people have). Sure, say what you want about the most misunderstood, butt-of-every-joke state, but this book reveals the true heart of most first generation Hispanic/Latino American’s experience in Jersey. You would never have guessed that Spanish-speaking sci-fi junkies exist, but they do, and they’re nerdier than the suburbanites you usually see at COMICON. But what’s even more authentically expressed in this book is the passion and insanity that is every Hispanic/Latino American’s experience. We really do fight and torture each other the way Junot conveys. Maybe it’s because we’ve inherited a genetically evolved intensity that is uniquely South American? Who knows? Whatever it is, there’s finally a story about Jerseyites out there that I’m sort of proud of.
3 responses
Not to piss in anyone’s Cheerios, but I just finished this book and was nowhere near as impressed as Arquillos was. It’s true that Oscar is a good character, that Yunior’s voice is strong and entertaining, and that having an out-of-place nerd is an excellent conflict creator. But every time the book leaves NJ for the DR, it falls flat. The middle sections revolving around Oscar’s mother and acting grandmother are really tedious, and in retrospect I wish I’d just skipped over them. “Oscar Wao” was originally a short story published in The New Yorker back in 2000 or 2001, and that story was amazing. It’s a shame that Diaz, in my opinion, spent the following six or so years “novelizing” that story only to make it weaker.
And I, on the other hand, have to agree wholeheartedly with Arquillos, and reply to EE that I found the storylines around the women’s lives vivid and really entertaining. I’m not Hispanic, but half my heart is in Jersey, for better or worse, and from the first footnote to the last foot-in-the-face battle, I loved this book.
Don Arquillos – loved the book. Read it one sitting when it came out and laughed out loud and might’ve cried at the end (no witnesses, so no proof it happened).
Hope L.A. is the mess it always was (at the precipice, near or already free-falling to a bubbling hell); SF/Bay Area is warm $4 dive bar Coronas (and rising) & detestable hope-for-tomorrow-cheeriness with a vicious buddha smirk (or, more terrifying, a full-on had-a-dentist-since-childhood smile).
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