The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
ISBN: 9781594483295
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The Oscar Wao of the title is Oscar Cabral, a Dominican American, overweight "ghetto nerd," lovesick kid from Paterson, NJ, who dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien. Oscar's story is narrated by Yunior, his roommate at Rutgers University, and sometimes boyfriend of his sister Lola, a runaway punk rocker and track star. This rich work encompasses the heartbreaking and tragic story of Oscar's mother Beli, and follows her from her youth in Santo Domingo in the 1940-50's during a brutal regime to adulthood living in New Jersey. The novel alternates between life in Paterson and the Dominican Republic, and it is chock full of slang and footnoted reports of Dominican history. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for best novel in 2007.
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