This essay will analyse Junot Diaz’s book “The brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” , the themes of transculturalism, diaspora, identity and in what way the book can be seen as a carnivalesque meditation on new transcultural latin american subjects, agents and their complex trajectories.
Oscar De Leon, is an obese Dominican boy who is growing up in New Jersey. He is a huge fan of Science fiction, fantasy novels and in love with the idea of being in love.
However, he is not ignorant to the major issues affecting him and throughout the magic realism of Diaz’s writing the reader follows Oscar’s obsession, with Fuku ,the curse that has been affecting his family and society generation after generation(Bakka, 2009). Even through one of the first themes of the books, the curse, one can see the transculturalism existing in an immigrant family (Deissler, 2011). How cultural identity can be passed from one generation to another colliding or merging with a new cultural and national form such as the american in Oscar’s case.
“They say it first came 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.”
The novel is multilayered and often narrated by various different characters, however the majority of the book is narrated in a third person which is later on revealed to be one of Oscar’s roommates, Yunior, who because of his appearance in other stories by the same author is believed to be Diaz’s alter ego. Despite the made up characters that often reflect the author’s personal experiences , Diaz, manages to intertwine, historical events with the fictional characters in his book, and one of the first ways he achieves that is through the curse. Fuku is a curse that arrived to the Antilles archipelagos when Europeans came to the islands , and its here that the narrator poses a direct relationship between the curse and the dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo , as he mentions in the colloquial way in which he writes the book that they were “tight”. In the footnote of that point one can notice the mix of history and realism with fiction in order to depict the diaspora and effect the Dictatorship had, as Rafael Leonidas Trujillo was the ruler of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his was assassinated in 1964.
Apart from the colloquial language ,Diaz writing has many carnivalesque elements that reflect the otherwise tragic events occurring in a humorous and all inclusive manner , often creating a binary opposition between the actual event taking place and the atmosphere he creates. (Keown, 2005)
“In the days of the Trujillato, Belaguer was just one of El Jefe’s more efficient ringwraiths. Much is made of his intelligence (he certainly impressed the Failed Cattle Thief) and of his asceticism (when he raped little girls he kept it real quiet). After Trujillo’s death he would take over Project Domo and rule the country from 1960 to 1962, from 1966 to 1978, and again from 1986 to 1996 (by then dude was blind as a bat, a living mummy)”
Oscar’s identity, differs from the stereotypes associated with latin americans or POC people whereas Yunior, Lola’s boyfriend who appears later on, is the personification of dominican masculinity (VanBeest, 2012). One could argue that this stereotype of masculinity was partly derived from the dictatorship of Rafael, since as an authority figure the dictaror reflected some of the ideals and stereotypes of the dominican republic man. However, although Oscar is not a typical Dominican man, Alvarado argues that there are four stereotypical representations of POC persons: Exotic, Humorous, Pitied and dangerous, and the character falls at least into the pitied category through his unsuccessful tries at love. (McLeod, 2007)
In the first chapter of the novel, the reader can clearly notice that Oscar is not the stereotypical Dominican casanova. The only time he is shown to have success with love and is presented as a casanova with girls was at the young age of seven when he is presented to be dancing two overly sexual dances called merengue and the perrito while his family is also encouraging him. Again , here one can see that identity and values can derive directly and inherited from relatives enhancing and preserving the ideals of dominican masculitnit. He also finds himself in a relationship with 2 girls , very different from each other. One girl is maritza , oscar is interested in her as she is shown to be beautiful. The other one, Olga is interested in his star trek collection and other of oscar’s obsessions as well as wrestling, and she comes from a puerto rican family with bad reputation. After convincing the both to date him simultaneously he is forced to make a choice by Maritza and after dumping Olga , he is also left by Maritza, leaving him alone and devastated, and humiliated as others make fun of him for being gay.
In this harsh beginning of the book and oscars life , one can notice the devastation of how a post dictatorship diaspora can affect the lives of people and a community for generations. A dictatorship and its fall can be responsible for creating a cultural and national identity , in the case of Oscar, and his surrounding. If one doesn’t fit the stereotypes of a dominican man, he is shamed. In Oscar one can see how the ideals and identities of a dictatorship can be passed from generation to generation showing the power of the absence of the dictatorship and creating a clash between his dominican and american identity.
As the novel continues and more characters and stories are added one can notice the grim humor in the writing . Bakthin has said “carnival and carnivalesque create an alternative social space, characterised by freedom, equality and abundance” in the carnival the grim or transgressive becomes the focus and creates a different way of living , this elements are also found in the book through the cultural collision of various binary opposition such as dream and reality. Through the carnival and the carnivalesque , one escapes from the dominant social hierarchies , the same way diaz transgress from the proper way of writing and shows the dominant societal values in a humorous or otherwise ironical way. Oscar himself can be seen as a carnivalesque character, as he is transgressing from his cultural forms but find a sense of belongings , as maslow argues, through his books and ideas of love. (Robinson, 2011)
“- Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself.
– But your yourself sucks!
– It is, lamentably, all I have.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In the next chapter of the novel, the narrator switches to Oscar’s sister Lola. one can notice a more strong use of the supernatural elements and style through Lola and the “bruja” feeling which she feels will alter significantly their life and thus she takes it as her chance to change and rebel. The bruja feeling experienced by Lola falls into Diaz’s magic realism way of writing, by adding small supernatural elements mixing with seemingly real story (Gale, n.d.). In this part one can see a strong element of love and violence occurring between Lola and her mother, and how they both exercise control over each in different way. she runs away, with her boyfriend who proves to be a bad influence,she is attempting to use her sexuality as means of control but regrets losing her virginity to him. The lifestyle, with her boyfriend Aldo, becomes a failure and she is much less than satisfied with her choices, thus she seeks help from Oscar and eventually reunites with her family. However her mother sends her to Santo Domingo where she lives with her grandmother but soon her stay causes her to interact and connect with her dominican roots, ancestry and the curse of fuku. This passing of history seems to connect with the supernatural element of the bruja feeling for Lola, and the feeling of the passage of history relates to stopping the curse. (Shmoop.com, 2016)
“That night while we lay in Aldo’s sweltering kitty-litter-infested room I told him: I want you to do it to me.
He started unbuttoning my pants. [Aldo:] Are you sure?
Definitely, I said grimly.
He had a long, thin dick that hurt like hell, but the whole time I just said, Oh yes, Aldo, yes, because that was what I imagined you were supposed to say while you were losing your “virginity” to some boy you thought you loved.”
The shift in the setting of the novel between America and the dominican Republic show oscars cultural hybridity and reflect the shift of oscar’s feelings regarding his identity and despite having inherited one culture and being born in another he somehow feels left out of both, which makes him a transgressive character in his immediate environment as well as himself. This transgressions which makes him an outsider can be seen as a parallel of the immigrant as an outsider (Ruffolo, 2009)
Furthermore, The book continues to look at oscars failed but passionate search for love and identity struggle. The failure in his love life, almost caused him his life as he attempts suicide after a rejection. Lola finds a new boyfriend Yunior who narrates the majority of the novel. Yunior , moves in with oscar later on in the book to help him with his depression and suicidal tendencies. It does not take long for oscar to attempt suicide again, and getting seriously injured. After his high school graduation, Oscar moves to the dominican republic, in an effort to reconnect with his roots and identity while still following his pursuit for love and sex. His ultimate obsession with love and fear of dying a virgin soon costs him his life after falling in love with a prostitute, Ybon. Her boyfriend , is responsible for oscar falling into a coma after a serious beating . After surviving and healing from this near death experience, Oscar is still not giving up on Ybon, he stalks her and she eventually softens up and has sex with me. After her boyfriend find out, he kills Oscar. What is significant is the final moments before his death. Oscar gives an emotional speech about the significance of love in spanish, and at that moment identifies himself to be a hero in his death, because it is only in his inevitable death as a result of Fuku that he can be what he dreamt of, and that arguably his last words, show that he has finally come in terms with his cultural identity by saying “Because anything you can dream , you can be” . But even in his final moments , when he seems to have come in term with death , love and self, his identity is challenged until the very end. “Listen, we’ll let you go if you tell us what fuego means in English. Fire, he blurted out, unable to help himself”
In conclusion,The novel is an indirect study and examination of Identity and transculturalism. From race to culture to masculinity, as well as a representation of the struggles left behind by the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The reader of Diaz’s novel are left with questions of belonging, a search from home and identity as well as love. Where do one’s roots lie ? and how does one get to them ? . Diaz manages to create the notion of struggle through the carnivalesque way of writing and magical realism between national and cultural identities and forms with flashback and the use of spanglish, mixing the two timelines and languages together (Bakhtin, 1984). He shows the inner struggle through adolescence were multiple characters are have trouble defining who they are based on the nation and race .
“It was a message more than a feeling, a message that tolled like a bell: change, change, change”
Through this novel Oscar is the personification of the intersection of diasporic cultures and nations , he is the hybrid of transculturalism.
. In this novel we see Oscar’s mother as the immigrant , a family of diaspora from the dominican republic who gives her children part of their identity, one that mixes with the popular culture of the united states creating either a new transcultural identity or in other cases an outsiderness of both and the absence of one.
The mix of cultural forms, the transculturalism and the complexities of traveling cultures and their complex trajectories, are the constant themes in this book as the reader witness the struggle in search for identity , love and belonging through the characters. In fact, all of the above, can be seen just with the opening of the book as it is clearly stated in the epigraph on the novel in the writing of Derrick Wlacotts “Either I am nobody, or I am a nation”
References
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