April Group Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

[Hasnah]

Hi All, You may post your reviews here!

[Alegna226]

I enjoyed reading "The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao". I liked how Junot Diaz told the story from the different points of view of the different family members. This gave me a fuller picture of who each person was and why they acted as they did. I love how many intimate scenes were shared by everyone. The one that stands out most in my mind fpr some reason is when Lola runs away from home to live on the Jersey shore with her boyfriend. Her motive for leaving was to get away from her manipulative yet ailing mom. My heart sank when she arranged to meet her brother Oscar and he betrayed her by bringing along their mother. When she ran away from them, the mom also ran, and fell and her desperate cries swayed her daughter to return to help her but it was all a ploy to capture her. For some reason this was for the best bc Oscar needed his sister arroind to watch out for him.

I could understand why Lola wanted to escape; her mother could not give her love. You can not give something you don't have. She always provided but learmed that being vulnerable to heartache. Her life experiences hardened her. Also, what struck a chord was how she would speak to Lola. It was soooo demeaning like when she had a Japanese pen pal and the mom said that they would want to adopt her. She tried to tear her down ro keep her broken, fraile and dependent but it didn't work. She learned to rise above it.

Lastly, I noticed that neither of the two: Oscar and Lola were particularly successful in terms of academics or career but I believed that they attained the most important accomplishment in life (well Oscar did) which was finding love, yes a questionable object of his affection, but he learned about the beauty of human warmth, the vulnerabilty of love making and the intimate moments that follow. That is what everyone at yearning for and searching for. It is worth living for and if it's threatened (as was his case) worth dying for. Up until that point, Oscar's life was anything but "Wonderous" and this event marked him. It was indeed "a brief yet wonderous". Although cut short, he died happy.