Summary Of The Brief And Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz said once “if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves”. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DÍaz is about the life Oscar Cabral and his family. The story takes place in the Dominican Republic and in Paterson, New Jersey during the reign of Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo was the Dominican republic's Dictator who was nicknamed El Jefe for good reason. The main story follows Oscar as he grows up but also ventures into the stories of his sister Lola, his mother Beli, his grandfather Abelard, and the narrator, Yunior. He also talks about the curse Fuku, or in other words intergenerational trauma. How Fuku is placed onto anyone who got into trouble with Trujillo

Soon after Beli gains this confidence in herself she falls in love with the gangster. The Gangster was Trujillo's sister's wife and a hitman for Trujillos himself but Beli fell head over heels for him. Later in their relationship, he takes her on a vacation only to leave her for work. On Beli’s way home she noticed that “ a man sitting in a rocking chair in front of one of the hovels had no face and he waved at her as she passed but before she could confirm it the pueblito vanished into the dust”(135). It is in this scene of the book when Beli is most confused about who she wants to be. The faceless man represents her uncertainty of herself, as she doesn’t know who she is or who she wants to be. Without a face, people have no way to know who someone is, and because Beli doesn’t know who she is or who she wants to be, what she sees is a reflection of herself in the man on the side of the road. Despite the fact that she had become more confident in herself she still had that underlying need for affection and that lead to her getting herself into trouble. Even though she knew that being with the gangster would cause her trouble she stayed with him. This reveals how that need for affection is a scar placed on people by intergenerational trauma and even though there are moments where those scars seem faded as the person wearing them is happy, they

Throughout the book, Diaz argues that trauma caused in the past is passed down in a curse called Fuku or intergenerational trauma. While every character in the story has their own Fuku they all deal with it in different ways, however, all come to this sense of self-pride. When they have this they feel happy and it is the only time we truly see these characters as happy throughout the story. However this happiness never lasts for them as the Fuku always catches up with them, their need for affection puts them in these dangerous situations that are difficult to