“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” tells the story of Oscar Wao, a shy, nerdy, overweight and sometimes awkward Dominican-American living in Paterson, New Jersey.
The boyfriend of Oscar’s older sister Lola is the narrator, because he feels that he owes it to Oscar to tell his story. He not only tells the story of Oscar’s short life, but also that of Oscar’s ancestors, which is part of Oscar’s story, too.
Oscar’s maternal grandparents were killed by Trujillo, as were his mother’s two older sisters. His mother was sent to live in the United States where she met Oscar’s absent father, of whom we learn almost nothing.
Oscar is a lover of all things nerdy, and spends his life trying to live out the Dominican stereotype that ‘no Dominican man dies a virgin’ by literally throwing himself at women. This strategy fails almost every time, and the couple of times it does not completely fail, it still is not successful to the degree that he wants it to be.
When Oscar visits his great-grandmother in the Dominican Republic with his mother and sister one summer, he falls in love with his great-grandmother’s neighbor, a retired stripper. No matter that she has a[n] (abusive) boyfriend, no matter that she is much older than him. Oscar goes with a dulled version of his normal strategy: he waits for her to come home and then goes over to her house to sit and talk with her.
This works fine until her policeman-boyfriend discovers them and has her and Oscar beaten to a pulp. Oscar goes home depressed and convinced that his life has no meaning.
He continues living this way for a while, but then decides to return to the DR and convince his love to forget her abusive relationship and come to the U.S. with him. Oscar doesn’t return: thus the brief life of Oscar Wao.
Díaz’s dialogue, although at times coarse and explicit, is rich in detail and in Spanish–to know the Spanish he uses gives the reader a much more complete vision of what he is talking about.
A story about what makes life worthwhile and complete and how people fulfill their lives differently, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” emphasizes the most important thing in life without plainly mentioning it: love.