Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. Agraduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He is the cofounder of Voices of Our Nation Workshop. (from junotdiaz.com)
Reading:
Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, 2-54
NOTE: The readings for this class cannot be simply completed the night before. You will need to pace yourself and use your time wisely.
Study Question:
1. Díaz incorporates a number of different styles and allusions in the text, from slang and Spanglish to the academic footnote, from the well-respected Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott to the less culturally-respected Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. What is the effect of combining these different forms?
