The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Oscar de León is an overweight Dominican American young man with a passion for what the book refers to as “the Genres”: science fiction, fantasy, superhero comics, and tabletop role-playing games. As a member of the Dominican diaspora that fled Trujillo’s vicious regime, Oscar feels strongly connected to his ancestral home. At the same time, Oscar’s personality and worldview clash with traditional Dominican masculinity. His inability to attract women, his love of nerd culture, and his overuse of big words like “pulchritudinous” alienate him from his Dominican peers, who question whether he is really Dominican at all.

Though keenly aware of the personal and political misfortune that’s swept through his family for three generations, Oscar prefers to think of this trauma as the result of a supernatural curse, like something out of one of his favorite books or films. He is naturally drawn to stories in which outcasts are suddenly given enormous powers or responsibilities, particularly J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings book series and the 1988 anime film Akira. As he grows older, he begins to lean toward texts like Alan Moore’s The Watchmen, which depicts trauma as an unending cycle.

On a visit to the Dominican Republic, Oscar meets Ybón, and although he knows he will die there, he later returns to the country to continue courting here, a decision that results in his death.