Lonely life of obese, nerdy kid Oscar Dao. He grows up in New Jersey but returns with his family to Santo Dominica in the Dominican Republic.
There is a lot of historical background to the Dominican Republic and the many revolutions in its history.
The story is well written and it is told by the voices of several different people including Oscar, his sister Lola, their mother Benicia Cabral, their grandmother La Inca and Oscar’s friend Junior.
Fuku, or the general idea of fate or a curse is one of the underlying themes of the Dominican psyche and Oscar and his family do not escape this sentiment.
The characters are well drawn, the dialogue is a mixture of English and Spanish and the story is funny and sad at the same time.
Oscar spends his whole life trying to become a sci-if author, looking for love and friendship and finds none. (

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MaggieFlo | Aug 6, 2018 |

I expected to love this book, especially with Lin Manuel Miranda reading. I gave it an extra star for the fantastic reading, but I didn't love the book. Great ending though. (

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CSKteach | Jul 20, 2018 |

Incredible prose. Junot Diaz tells the tale of Oscar and his colorful family in such a vibrant and stunning way. A deeper look into what it means to be Dominican. (

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trile1000 | Jul 1, 2018 |

I liked this book, but for some reason I was having a hard time sticking with it... switched to audio (read by Lin-Manuel Miranda) and fell right into the story. It’s very dark and sad, but I enjoyed the family history a lot, and who couldn’t love Oscar?

Also, I’m pretty pleased with how much of my español I have retained since high school and college. 😂

Another 1001books success. (

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sprainedbrain | May 12, 2018 |

Oscar, Lola, Santo Domingo, Tolkien references. Not sure which I loved most. (

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cindiann | May 3, 2018 |

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thingScore 88

Díaz’s novel also has a wild, capacious spirit, making it feel much larger than it is. Within its relatively compact span, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” contains an unruly multitude of styles and genres. The tale of Oscar’s coming-of-age is in some ways the book’s thinnest layer, a young-adult melodrama draped over a multigenerational immigrant family chronicle that dabbles in tropical magic realism, punk-rock feminism, hip-hop machismo, post-postmodern pyrotechnics and enough polymorphous multiculturalism to fill up an Introduction to Cultural Studies syllabus.

added by Shortride | editThe New York Times Book Review, A. O. Scott (Sep 30, 2007)

It is Mr. Díaz’s achievement in this galvanic novel that he’s fashioned both a big picture window that opens out on the sorrows of Dominican history, and a small, intimate window that reveals one family’s life and loves. In doing so, he’s written a book that decisively establishes him as one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices.

added by Shortride | editThe New York Times, Michiko Kakutani (Sep 4, 2007)

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (6 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Junot Diaz	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Bragg, Bill	Cover artist	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Pareschi, Silvia	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Snell, Staci	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Work-to-work relationships

Is contained in

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Includes Story Collection Drown) (Unabridged) by Junot Diaz

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Series (with order)

Canonical title

Original title

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Alternative titles

Some editions contain the short story "Drown," narrated by Jonathan Davis

Original publication date

2007

People/Characters

Oscar "Oscar Wao" de Leon

Dolores "Lola" de Leon

Hypatia Belicia "Beli" Cabral de Leon

Yunior

Important places

Bani, Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic

New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

Paterson, New Jersey, USA

Rutgers University

(show all 7 items)

Important events

Trujillo dictatorship (1930|1961)

Related movies

Awards and honors

Pulitzer Prize (Fiction, 2008)

National Book Critics Circle Award (2008)

Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (2008.1|Fiction, 2008)

David Bowie's Top 100 (2007)

Massachusetts Book Award (Fiction, 2008)

(show all 11 items)

Epigraph

Of what import are brief, nameless lives . . . to Galactus?? (Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Vol. 1, No. 49, April 1966)

Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!
From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road
to when I was a dog on these streets;
if loving these islands must be my load,
out of corruption my soul takes wings,
But they had started to poison my soul
with their big house, big car, bit-time hbohl,
coolie, nigger, Syrian, and French Creole,
so I leave it for them and their carnival--
I taking a sea-bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.
(Derek Walcott)

Dedication

Elizabeth de Leon

First words

They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles.

Quotations

You wanna smoke?
I might partake. Just a little though. I would not want to cloud my faculties.

“They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú–generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. Also called the fukú of the Admiral because the Admiral was both its midwife and one of its great European victims; despite “discovering” the New World the Admiral died miserable and syphilitic, hearing (dique) divine voices. In Santo Domingo, the Land He Loved Best (what Oscar, at the end, would call the Ground Zero of the New World), the Admiral’s very name has become synonymous with both kinds of fukú, little and large; to say his name aloud or even to hear it is to invite calamity on the heads of you and yours.”

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

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Original language

Canonical DDC/MDS

▾References

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Wikipedia in English (4)

Johnny Abbes García

Junot Díaz

Ramfis Trujillo

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

▾LibraryThing members' description

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▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0739494287, Paperback)

Brief biographical study.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:24:23 -0400)

(see all 3 descriptions)

▾Library descriptions

Oscar, an overweight Dominican from a New Jersey ghetto, dreams of becoming a writer and finding love, but a Fuku curse has haunted his family for generations, and may well prevent him from attaining his desires.

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