The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I really enjoy the interweaving of Oscar’s life story, his mother Beli’s, and his sister Lola’s.  The Fuku curse is entwined within each story. A curse that I think can be related to many people’s lives, in the way that we all believe that a particular unfortunate event “only happens” to us.  The Fuku, said to be derived from the new world.  So it is a curse that comes from new events entering into a world we don’t want changed. The examples of the fuku’s curse on Oscar’s family began with Beli’s relationship with the gangster, Beli and Lola’s tumultuous relationship, and Oscar’s struggles with girls, his virginity, and his weight (to name a few). Lola’s friend that tries his hardest to take care of Oscar at Rutger’s by working out with him mentions in the beginning “I guess I should have fucking known. Dude used to say he was cursed, use to say this a lot, and if i’d really been old-school Dominican I would have (a) listened to the idiot, and then (b) run the other way.” (p.171)  Can’t we all agree that we have a curse following us around? Waiting in the shadows to pounce?

“It’s perfectly fine if you don’t believe in these “superstitions.” In fact, it’s better than fine—it’s perfect. Because no matter what you believe, fuku believes in you.” (p. 5)  Can’t we say that these “superstitions” in fact follow all of us. It make’s me curious over what the author incorporated from his own experiences to create this book. I think that alot of writer’s accidentally or purposely incorporate their own experiences into their fiction writing. Diaz does a wonderful job in this book because of his wit but also his writing style, the ability to write about terrible moments (for example, Beli’s beating in the cane field) but do so in a manner that draws us in farther into the story.  It makes me appreciate fiction pieces even more and how they can help those of us writing non fiction as well. He makes me believe that everything in this story actually happened. That Oscar, Beli, and Lola are actually out there and their curse continues to plague them.  

The curse makes me think of some stories that my Auntie’s in Indonesia told me about when we were in Bali. The Hindu temples there believe that if a woman menstruating walks into a temple they will go crazy. My Auntie’s claimed to have actually known a woman who’s daughter did and they claim she did in fact go crazy. This “superstition” may seem crazy but I would never defy it for the chance that I too could lose my mind. Some of these curses, like the fuku could seem ridiculous to think but  can we really deny its existence?