Earlier in the summer I also devoured the 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (who also won the MacArthur Genius Grant). It had been on my "to read" list, but after reading "Miss Lora" (winner of the Sunday Times Short Story Award) from Diaz's latest short story collection, This Is How You Lose Her, I had ample motivation. That short story knocked me flat. The narrative point of view, the subject, the voice... (I have read some commentary from people who hated it, but I will politely disagree.) Anyway, when my grading was done for school, I hunkered down.
The beginning was rough going -- not because the writing was not fine, but I had to get used to the massive footnotes. I couldn't decide when to read them: right when the footnote appeared, at the end of the sentence, end of the paragraph, end of chapter? I found my rhythm and I enjoyed the pithy history (I had missed my "mandatory two seconds of Dominican history") and cultural mythology explanations.
Just yesterday I was talking to my dad about these footnotes and he commented that this was much like Melville's footnotes in Moby Dick. I hadn't read that since high school (when I actually did enjoy it), and as I said, "Oh, yeah..." I remembered that Diaz had alluded to Moby Dick somewhere in the novel (let me also say that Diaz has so many allusions to so many things, science fiction and fantasy, in particular). Then, later yesterday I found a, I don't know what to call it, "promo video" of Diaz on the MacArthur website and in this "interview" he mentions... wait for it... Moby Dick! Why? Diaz explains how he is interested in the "particular granular" experiences and for him it is a certain narrator, Yunior de Las Casas, a young Dominican immigrant who grows up in New Jersey. Although this is a small, particular experience, he believes, there is power in this story that transcends it's uniqueness. This is when Diaz brings up Melville who wrote about whaling -- not many whalers in the mid-19th century, yet, Diaz argues, the novel is able to capture the American experience and the human experience by putting men out on this whaling ship. Why do I bring this up? You know (or you will know) that I am always harping on the idea of the mentor text (or mentor author?) -- the idea that when we read we either consciously (which I ask you to do) or unconsciously (which I hope you do in this semester of reading widely) pick up the "trade secrets" of writing. Do you think it is an accident that Diaz uses footnotes like Melville did and then alludes to Moby Dick specifically in both his novel and then an interview four years later? I think not.
Aside from a good lesson in mentor texts, my students would enjoy this novel for many reasons. The vernacular, the feel that the narrator is telling the story directly to them, the idea that Oscar is an outcast, the blunt sexuality in the story. And I liked it for all those reasons, but I was thinking about what had me flying through those pages? The idea of a long story -- a long immigrant story -- appeals to me. I am the granddaughter of an immigrant. Yes, an immigrant of a different time and place; an immigrant not running from such violence (although I have read arguments about the absolute corruption of the Catholic church in southern Italy and its particular brand of exploitation), but there is that idea of how this "other culture" shapes the experience of the next generations that I have felt throughout my life. For me it's the wanting to blend in and not be seen as an interloper, the idea that hard work is the way to succeed, the drive to not violate my grandfather's sacrifices and ensure that my life matches his legacy. Some of these are apparent in this immigrant story, but not exactly. Yunior's explanation of the evolution of Fuku in the beginning of the novel that then is appropriated by the Dominican Republic's despotic dictator, Trujillo, illustrates the idea that history has a strangle-hold on its people and their descendants. This idea that history, particularly violent history and history of fleeing a homeland because of violence, can traumatize future generations is called something...transgenerational effects?
Then there is the idea I found in this novel that transcends the immigrant experience and I think resonates in so many of our families. It is the idea that our mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers have these pasts, and often times they leave them behind and then keep them hidden from their children and grandchildren. I don't want to say that these are "secrets," but I guess they are. Secrets that I do not begrudge individuals for keeping, but, but, but... As I mentioned above, Fuku, as Yunior explains it, is wrapped up in historical exploitation of people of color by the white man, but by the end I couldn't help wondering if we all perpetuate Fuku in our own lives through our secret keeping. There is liberation in having Yunior tell this story -- putting his friend, Oscar de Leon, into a larger context to memorialize his life. In the parallel stories of Oscar's mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral, and then later Oscar's own experiences in the Dominican Republic, history repeats itself and it made me wonder, what if she would have told this story before Yunior needed to set the record straight? That maybe, just maybe, things would have been different. I am fascinated by this struggle between the past and the present. How much do we keep secret, how much do we tell? How those things that we think we shouldn't tell might be the very stories our children and grandchildren need to hear so they understand us better; so that maybe they can avoid the mistakes of our pasts or go into their own experiences with their eyes wide open. Yet, it is human nature to hold back -- to keep those secrets of the things which traumatized us and make us ashamed. Yet, story, the telling of our experiences -- the good, bad, and ugly -- could maybe set us free from the past.
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