The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Every time I pick this novel up again, I am completely sucked in.

Summary, courtesy of wikipedia:

The novel is an epic story narrated by Yunior de Las Casas, the protagonist of Díaz's first book Drown and chronicles not just the "brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao," an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey and obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels, with comic books and role-playing games and with falling in love, but also the curse of the "fukú" that has plagued Oscar's family for generations and the Caribbean (and perhaps the entire world) since colonization and slavery.

The middle sections of the novel center on the lives of Oscar's runaway sister, Lola, his mother, Hypatia "Belicia" Cabral, and his grandfather, Abelard, under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Rife with footnotes, science fiction and fantasy references, comic book analogies, various Spanish dialects and hip-hop inflected urban English, the novel is also a meditation on story-telling, Dominican diaspora and identity, masculinity, the contours of authoritarian power and the long horrifying history of slavery in the New World.

I absolutely love this novel. I am not a 'good' hispanic. I've never learned to speak Spanish, I'm not well-versed in my family's history. As far as the lifestyle of most modern "whatever"-Americans go, I am emphasis on the American. I've noticed in a lot of Hispanic/Latino/Whatever people my age this results in this odd quasi-racist distancing from our heritage. We joke about how we're really only "brown on the outside" and refer to our inner "whiteness" in this giggling, half-proud, self-conscious manner that's almost universal. For ease of discussion, I'm going to use the term "Hispanic" to discuss this novel whenever I need to refer to culture that is not specifically Oscar's Dominican background.

But this novel laid bare the bones of the combination of two cultures. Oscar is a lot closer to his immigrant roots than I am... his mother came to the states after a beating in the Dominican Republic under the dictator Trujillo forced her to lose her first child. But still, the link is there. In his life is something not depicted by the iconic images of Americana. Only obscurely in my family tree can you find some light-skinned woman standing in her perfect model kitchen a la the 1950s. I've dealt with the issue of my heritage in a lot of odd ways. As a young child, I wanted to grow up to be a red-head with pale skin and green eyes or a blonde with blue eyes. Basically, I wanted to grow up white. I never considered my dark skin or brown eyes ugly or anything. But my heroes? The characters in the movies I loved? Ariel, the little mermaid and her pale sistern. Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, the epitome of white girl California perfection.

So reading about Oscar's inherent uber-nerdiness? Having to struggle with his super macho male relatives attitudes towards his virginity? Yeah. I could identify with that, as well as the struggle and heartbreak each of his relative goes through just trying to live life. So much emphasis in Hispanic culture and literature deals with perseverence through tragedy, though the ties to your family history for good or bad and an overlaying passion that causes us to tilt at windmills, move to a different country to create a future for our families, defend whores that are married to gangsters. I think every Hispanic family has this rich culture of mythology and almost ghost stories that are passed down. A lot of the younger generations in America just roll their eyes--we're content to instead learn about Nintendo, the internet, gentrification, indie music, German heavy metal, Lord of the Rings and Dungeon and Dragons. I am the only Catholic out of all the grandchildren on my paternal side, and I'm not even confirmed. My grandfather was well along in his preparations to be a priest when he met my grandmother. Of course I over-identify with Oscar's love of anime and high fantasy instead of his own culture. I'm compelled to do so. It's in my blood, too.

But it seems to me that regardless of how much you ignore your elders' talking, it comes home to roost. If it's Oscar's family's curse, the thickening of your waistline into an exact replica of your aunt's or even the food you crave or a superstition. And this book made me wonder a lot more about all that aspect of my personality, as well as an incredible story that made me want to read everything Junot Diaz has ever written, ever. A very emotional, visceral blunt novel that still managed to leave me wanting more. Like I said, I love it.