Literature │The Other
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz

(published in “Avrupa” newspaper)

I believe that honesty is of upmost importance, in fact, it is vital, and that is why I am going to immediately declare that within the first few chapters of this novel, I nearly put it down and cast it away for good; but I kept on reading having been told that it was a good book, and as you may know, when someone tells you that a book is good, you almost feel that it is your obligation to be a fan of it also. The reason for my hesitation was due to my prudishness, so I have been called, I do not think of myself as a prude, but believe myself to have a particular taste, one that does not involve too much violence, too much sexual imagery and too much slang, after all, this book is certainly no Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The novel is riddled with sexual imagery and direct language which deals with life as a Dominican and the history of life in the Dominican Republic, a world that I literally knew nothing about. Once I became accustomed to the narrative, I found myself quite enticed and intrigued by the novel’s plot. The wondrous element of this novel was the way in which I became completely submerged in a completely alien environment whilst sitting in my familiar chair in my familiar setting, and what a fascinating plunge it was to carry on reading this novel with its numerous intriguing stories that unravel slowly before your eyes.

What I really want to discuss briefly is the subject of women and their portrayal in this novel. The Story is ‘yes’, named after Oscar who is a geek who can not help but fall in love over and over again, but the novel centres on strength, belief, passion and survival, especially when it comes to women; such as Oscar’s mother Beli, his sister Lola and grandmother La Inca. Now I must make it very clear, I am in no way a feminist, but one can not help but look into feminist theory when reading this novel; one must take into account the way in which language is used and the way that it is terribly apparent that there is a strong male voice throughout. The novel has a male narrator and the focalisation is quite evidently male also, and yet it is the women within the narrative that literally govern the entire story, therefore Diaz does not completely suppress the female experience altogether but describes one in which women are merely pieces of eye candy, a bit of entertainment, and in some cases, particularly to Oscar, the universe.

Women throughout history and throughout this novel have always been treated as the ‘other’. Women in this novel tend to be feared by men, either by their beauty or their ferocity. In one instance, in chapter five “Poor Abelard” which is about a doctor (Beli’s father) who fears that his beautiful daughter will be noticed and raped by the evil dictator Trujillo who had his way with any beauty he wanted, we witness how a woman’s beauty becomes her enemy in such a horrific circumstance, she becomes a piece of meat that a father can only hope to appear rotten and not given a second glance. Simone de Beauvoir discusses the way in which women have been viewed throughout history by men and why it was important for men to be able to differentiate themselves from women. One can see that the reason is partially to do with the fact that in many cases such as in this novel, that they fear what they may not be able to control. In Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex, she discusses the woman as the Other and the way that everything gets broken down into biology, she writes; “Woman? Very simple, say the fanciers of simple formulas: she is a womb, an ovary; she is a female…The word female brings up in his mind a saraband of imagery…the monstrous and swollen termite queen rules over the enslaved males; the female praying mantis and the spider, satiated with love, crush and devour their partners…” This is certainly the image that is conjured up throughout the novel; when men have felt like they have no control over a woman, she tends to get beaten up and put into her “place”. Dominican women are portrayed as tough women who are what would be considered as “male- like”, the language is used to mirror this, when a woman has done something courageous, Diaz refers to her as having the ‘ovaries’ to do it rather then the typical use of the male anatomy that tends to be used.

The fact that the women are strong within this particular culture, as portrayed by Diaz, is not because they are irrational and fiery the way that they may appear, but they are the way that they are through force and their experiences with men throughout the centuries. This known experience therefore gets passed down from mother to daughter and from father to son, which continues even when the setting changes, such as in this case which is New Jersey. This novel is certainly worth picking up, as it is quite fulfilling, not only as a small guide to the history of the Dominican Republic, but also into the lives that have come out of such a turbulent past and the way in which strength can be found within those that find themselves at their weakest point and when least expected.

©Zehra Mustafa