Junot Diaz is an American writer who was born in the Dominican Republic. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was six years old. Several critics listed his latest book, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” as one of the best books of last year. This month it won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. The book tells the story of Oscar de Leon, his family, and their Dominican roots. But the book is also about language, popular culture and the role of history in a family’s life. Faith Lapidus has more.
The hero of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is a fat, smart and lonely young man who spends his time writing science fiction stories. Oscar’s sister Lola and her boyfriend tell the story of Oscar and his family. You learn about Abelard Cabral, Oscar’s grandfather whose life is destroyed because he opposed the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. You learn about Oscar’s mother Belicia who moves to the United States after a painful love affair. And you learn about the life of Oscar and Lola as they grow up in the Hispanic neighborhoods near New York City.
One critic said this book establishes Junot Diaz as one of the most important voices in current literature. Diaz's writing is funny, intense and imaginative. It is also informative because he describes historic events in the Dominican Republic. He includes many Spanish words in the book to express the cultural ties of his characters. Here is a recording of Junot Diaz talking about the effect of using a language that some readers will not understand. He spoke at the Key West Literary Seminar in Florida in January.
JUNOT DIAZ: “There’s always a part of every message that gets lost and misinterpreted and not heard. The dream of perfect communication is a wonderful dream. It doesn’t exist. And unintelligibility is not a misfire of language, it’s a very vital and important component of it. And I always thought that in real life we have no problems with unintelligibility. You know, we’re more than happy not to hear ten, to fifteen or twenty percent of conversations and we sort of accept it. But in a book it becomes a different matter, right?”
Junot Diaz teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. His first book, “Drown,” was published in nineteen ninety-six. In this collection of stories, Diaz tells about the experiences of Dominican Americans like himself. He has said that even though he has lived in the United States most of his life, he still feels like an outsider. He says his children might feel American. But he says he is an immigrant and will stay an immigrant forever.
