Curse of the fukú

>> Junot Díaz’s first novel is a wondrous
but brief account of a Dominican
growing up in Jersey

by Juliet Waters

After finishing my second novel of love, torture and faint hope in the Dominican Republic, I’m actually starting to believe in the curse of the fukú. As Junot Díaz defines it, in his long awaited first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: “They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú—generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World.”

I read about it first in The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa’s fictionalization of the life of Rafael Trujillo (described by the narrator of Oscar Wao as “the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated”). Dominican folklore has it that Trujillo not only harnessed the fukú for his own purposes, but also used it well beyond the grave (thus the mysterious deaths of many of his CIA-backed assassins.) I’m not generally superstitious, but I found it a little creepy that a plane flying between New York and the Dominican went down the week The Feast of the Goat was released.

As fate would have it, I’ve actually managed to travel to many of the places Díaz describes in Oscar Wao. Samaná, where the authors of the St. James Bible were apparently visiting when they came up with their descriptions of Eden; Santo Domingo, the New World’s first colonial city, where Oscar will return to wrestle with his own version of the fukú; Saona Island, where the Taino Indians were slaughtered by the Spanish and where Trujillo imprisoned many of his dissidents; and Puerto Plata, with its ubiquitous all-inclusive three-star resorts where the authors of the St. James Bible should have visited when looking for descriptions of hell. (I have yet, however, to travel to New Jersey, where most of the novel takes place.)

The Dominican Republic is both seriously gorgeous and seriously haunted. Like a dream both fabulous and frightening. The same could be said of Díaz’s first novel. Buzz has had it that ever since his much acclaimed debut collection of short stories, Díaz has been struggling for over a decade with writer’s block. The good news is that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a fantastic read, funny, hip, intelligent, informative, sexy, and hilariously nerdy. While the assimilation of Dominicans into the New World is often painful, the assimilation of the reader into this world is effortless and irresistible.

The bad news is that even while it’s impossible not the enjoy Díaz’s ghetto geeky voice, there’s something more than a little unconvincing about Oscar, the hero of the novel. Obese, virginal, nerdy beyond your worse nightmare involving D&D, Marvel Comics and all things “speculative,” Oscar is clearly an unusual Dominicano. The usual Dominicano is never far from the randy, athletic reggaeton’d stereotype. As a result, Oscar too often feels more like a figure moulded out of rejected parts than a full-blooded character.

If I believed in the fukú, I’d think of him almost like a talisman designed to distract the curse from the other more convincing characters. Fortunately, there are plenty of those, particularly on the female side of Oscar’s family. These include Lola, his runaway punk sister and Belicia, a hardhearted Dominican mother who does about as much harm to her kids as any evil spirit could.

In the end, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, with all its rich history and powerful resonance, still feels too brief. It’s a book that both fulfils its promise and leaves you wanting more. Mucho más.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by
Junot Díaz Riverhead, HC, 339PP, $30