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The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Decent Essays

Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, set in the late 1900’s, tells a story of Oscar Wao, an overweight Dominican “ghetto nerd”, his mother and rebellious sister who live together in Paterson, New Jersey. Throughout the novel Diaz incorporates many different stories about each character that show acts of resistance. One of the most prominent stories of resistance in the novel is through Oscar’s mom; Beli, who is prompted by great tragedy, known as the Trujillo curse, to love atomically and thus follows a dangerous path. Beli’s family history plays a large role in her choices that eventually compel her into a different life than what her adopted mother, La Inca, had wanted for her.
Beli resisting La Inca portrays her downfall, because Beli makes choices against La Inca’s desires that will harm her. She is unaware of her history and background of the Abelard family, other than the fact that La Inca continuously tells Beli that her father was a doctor and her mother was a nurse. Abelard Luis Cabral was Oscar and Lola’s grandfather, the man who said something bad about Trujillo, thus eventually sending the fukú curse down to Beli. Diaz writes “In those long days-before delincuencia and bank failures, before Diaspora- the Cabrals were numbered among the High of the Land “(211). The Cabral’s held a high place in society, but it was not until Abelard Cabral upset Trujillo that he was sentenced to the curse of Trujillo’s reign. The power of Trujillo is so strong it

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