still haven't read the brief wondrous life of oscar wao that takes place in various locales of jersey including paterson and the rutgers campus???? what are you waiting for? it's officially one of my top 5 books... junot diaz, jersey boy and rutgers alum, has won the pulitzer prize for fiction... read more about junot on the rutgers website and alumni news page. for more details about his childhood in old bridge, his recent "rome" prize and other thrilling details, see yesterday's star ledger article.
here's a snippet for our jersey readers:
New Jersey, a state worth discussing. Though much of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao takes place at Rutgers and in the Dominican Republic, a variety of New Jersey spots, from the Woodbridge Center mall to Wildwood, also get the Díaz treatment. “The same way I wanted to document the lives of my friends that nobody seemed to care about, that no one seemed to notice,” he says, “I also wanted to document a state which is the place where I learned to be human, to be an adult. That landscape helped shape my perceptions, my opinions, my vision of the world. It launched me into the world. On top of that, you feel like no one’s doing it, and you think, well, no competition.” No competition? What about Philip Roth? What about Díaz’s contemporary, Tom Perrotta? “It’s not that it’s not being done,” Díaz notes, “or hasn’t been done, it’s just that there’s so much more work to do. It’s a state worth discussing.”
2 comments:
Just finishing reading the conlusion last night. It was a great read. I mean I spent the last week or so blowing through 40 pages a day. I never read that fast, but I was so caught up in the story I wanted to know what would happen next. I wished he had not used the N word so much and had translated the sprinkling of spanish words but the story really gets. An the footnotes are one of the book's best features. Its not just about Jersey but its gives you such much instight into DR history and culture. Many Dominicans want discuss the some of the senstitive issues he hit upon.
Really good points, Dedric. As far as the N word, it totally makes me uncomfortable reading it so much, but as for someone who is an Anglo, it puts you right smack in the middle of the culture and the conversation that feels real.
And the Spanish words, La Francaise and I were looking up and asking friends at work what the hell this means.
My favorite though, is the "Truijatto"
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