The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Many highly regarded novels have been written about the Trujillo era, including Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat. Rather than work in the genre of historical fiction as those authors do, Díaz takes a much different approach, telling the story of the Trujillo era from the perspective of a Dominican American who wasn’t even born at the time of Trujillo’s death. What are the advantages and disadvantages of telling the story of the Trujillato in this way?

How do Oscar, Yunior, and Lola navigate the cultural incongruities of being Dominican American in the late 20th century? How do their approaches differ? In what ways are their approaches similar?

Masculinity is a major concern of the novel, and each male character has a different relationship to his own sense of manhood. How do Oscar, Yunior, Abelard, and Trujillo all exhibit different facets of masculinity? Is all of the masculinity depicted in the novel toxic?

The book repeatedly ascribes supernatural explanations for the political and personal trauma experienced by the Cabral-de León clan. Why is this? And what are the non-supernatural reasons for this trauma? Why do characters like Yunior and Oscar reject non-supernatural explanations?

Of all the cultural allusions in the book, none are more prominent than the references to The Lord of the Rings. How do the characters in Oscar Wao correspond to the characters in The Lord of the Rings? What is the significance of Oscar abandoning The Lord of the Rings as a cultural keystone in favor of darker texts like The Watchmen?

At first, it seems as if the mongoose represents zafa while the Man Without a Face represents fukú. How does the author complicate this simple dichotomy? Is there really such a thing as zafa, or is zafa merely a way to prolong cursed individuals’ lives so they suffer more fukú?

What are the meanings of páginas en blanco? How does this concept relate to the personal trauma experienced by the characters and the collective trauma experienced by the people of the Dominican Republic under Trujillo?

Why do you think Oscar returns to Santo Domingo to continue courting Ybón? Is he simply a hopeless romantic? Or is something else at play here?