Good Scribes Only #76 🇩🇴 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
About The Book:
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukœ—the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.
Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.
About the Author:
Junot DĂaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, DĂaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
About the Show:
Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 5, we’re traveling through 2000-2010, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
0-5 min — Introduction
5-15 min — Casting the characters
15-20 min — Fantasy and musicals
20-25 min — The immigrant experience
25-35 min — Oscar and his family
35-40 min — Dominican culture
40-45 min — Dictatorships
45-50 min — Plot continues
50-55 min — Curses and colonialism
55-60 min — Escapism and fantasy
60-67 min — Conclusion