Lola's Perspective

When I started to read the beginning of Part Two of Junot Diaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, it was Lola’s turn in perspective to have the novel be narrated in. She started out a little afterwards mentioning, “That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough (Diaz 205).” This quote really got to me because I agree with her a lot. In my heritage, the Mexican culture does have it beliefs and such but I think it is all nonsense. Such as small cures with herbal plants/natural resources, “the cry”, and “la chupacabra.” I could get into big arguments about these things with my family when we are together and one thing I guess I live by is Karma. All of the things that occur to us usually happen to us through Karma, you get what you give. To certain extent I do believe the stories from Mexico my elders tell me but to have them actually be some sort of a curse I don’t. Regardless though, even if my family were to be “cursed” I wouldn’t believe in such as things since again like I said it’s your actions that lead to whatever happens to you. In general for example you want to reach a goal in life YOU have to make it happen. Not some curse or luck that runs through a family is going to make it happen or not. It all depends in the actions that are taken to make other things occur. Like Lola said “I think there is only life. That’s enough (Diaz 205).” It is just a reality check.

Diaz's Style

In the beginning of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the style of writing Diaz uses is very unique to the point that it brings the readers interest higher into wanting to read the novel. I loved the fact that he mixed in Spanish and Spanglish into the text. When something is read in a different language certain things can be interpreted differently such as where Diaz says “Tio Rodolfo had four kids with three different women so the nigger was without doubt the family’s resident meteselo expert (Diaz 24).” This line makes it even more interesting and funny to read the entire novel because I know Spanish well, I’m fluent in it. Therefore when I was reading this line it seriously had me laughing hysterically because I could just imagine someone from my family say this. It’s not a “Dominican trait,” I believe it’s just in a lot of different cultures. Though, it could really just depend on who is the person saying it or how it can be interpreted from a text. Reading this reminded me of Sunset Park, Brooklyn because out of the few times I go I have always seen a group of Dominican/Puerto Rican older people on a certain block and they speak a lot in the way Diaz writes his novel in. It makes me really glad to see that he gives a taste of his heritage in his writing and loosens up unlike other writers who are just too boring with their writing style and don’t twist it up a bit. Nowadays in this country, Spanish is one of the top languages and with Junot Diaz’s novel, it has an ability to probably get more people to learn another language and also there is this quote that goes, “If you know more than one language you view the world differently (Unknown).” The way Diaz writes is very unique in a positive perspective where believe more authors should do and it doesn’t have to be necessarily Spanish.