Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey in the United States, where Díaz was raised, and it deals with the Dominican Republic's experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo.

[1] The book chronicles the life of Oscar de León, an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, who is obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels and with falling in love, as well as a curse that has plagued his family for generations.

Narrated by multiple characters, the novel incorporates a significant amount of Spanglish and neologisms, as well as references to fantasy and science fiction books and films.

[2] The book chronicles the life of Oscar de León, a Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, who is obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels and with falling in love, as well as with the curse that has plagued his family for generations.

The middle sections of the novel center on the lives of Oscar's runaway sister, Lola; his mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral; and his grandfather, Abelard.

Rife with footnotes, science fiction and fantasy references, comic book analogies, and various Spanish dialects, the novel mediates story-telling, the Dominican diaspora, identity, sexuality, and oppression.

Most of the story is told by an apparently omniscient narrator who is eventually revealed to be Yunior de Las Casas, a college roommate of Oscar's who dated Lola.

Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a young age, cannot find love, primarily because he is a nerd obsessed with science fiction and comic books.

However, Dionisio turns out to be married to one of Rafael Trujillo's sisters, who, in parallel with her son, has Beli taken to a cane field and also beaten nearly to death.

The story of the De Léon family is told and collected by the fictional narrator Yunior and the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani has described the voice of the book as "a streetwise brand of Spanglish".

[14] He often gives his commentary and analysis on the events he is relating in the story and sometimes reveals failings in his own life, both as a narrator and a person: "Players: never never never fuck with a bitch named Awilda.

[21] The reliance on Fukú, and its counterpart Zafa gives the novel a fantastical element which shows magical realism part in the plot, as the narrative follows the impact of the supernatural curse.

Diaz ties in Lola's daughters character with breaking the curse to show that the future of Dominican culture is to be defined by aspects others that a history of oppression and colonization.

He too is affected by the fuku curse that stems from a long history of oppression, and the only way for him to break free is to acknowledge his own culture while also adapting to his new surroundings in the United States.

Yunior covers multiple generations of the De Leon family history to emphasize the transgenerational struggles and the inheritance of the fuku curse.

In having this character take on such a surreal nature with characteristics not found in most mongooses, such as the ability to talk and vanishing in the blink of an eye, Díaz establishes an uncertainty that mirrors the controversies over whether superstitions exist.

The connection between a superstition and a magical character is more easily followed than one with an ordinary animal, highlighting the mongoose being a zafa against the de Leon's fukú.

Abelard Luis Cabral, Oscar's grandfather, learned this first hand after repeatedly refusing to bring his first-born daughter Jacquelyn to Trujillo's events.

His actions eventually resulted in Trujillo arranging for his arrest and eighteen-year sentence, where he was brutally beaten and treated to an endless series of electric shock treatments (237).

Finally, although Oscar dies in the end, Yunior admires how he was able to achieve real intimacy with a girl by being loving, faithful and vulnerable.

Although by the end none of the characters seem to have escaped the cycle of violence or the effects of fukú, Yunior has a dream in which Oscar waves a blank book at him, and he realizes that this can be a "zafa" (325) to the family curse.

Yunior also has hope that Isis, Lola's daughter, will one day come to him asking for stories about her family history, and "if she's smart and as brave as I'm expecting she'll be, she'll take all we've done and all we've learned and add her own insights and she'll put an end to it [the fukú]" (331).

Thus, the empty pages in Yunior's dreams signify that the future has yet to be written despite the checkered past, in both his life and in the painful history of oppression and colonialism in the Dominican Republic.

On the other hand, Isis potentially coming to Yunior to learn more about her uncle represents gaining an understanding of the past, which is key to decolonizing and pinpointing the structures that are systematically oppressive.

"[43] Comic books, science-fiction, and fantasy literature all play an important role in Oscar's upbringing and identity, and each is incorporated into the novel to reflect the world he lives in.

These references serve both to illuminate the world that Oscar lives in and create a parallel between the supernatural events in fantasy literature and the history of the Dominican Republic.

At the end of The Return of the King, Sauron's evil was taken by "a great wind" and neatly "blown away", with no lasting consequences to our heroes; but Trujillo was too powerful, too toxic a radiation to be dispelled so easily.

Even a woman as potent as La Inca, who with the elvish ring of her will had forged within Banί her own personal Lothlόrien, knew that she could not protect the girl against a direct assault from the Eye.Twice in the novel the mantra "Fear is the mindkiller" is repeated.

[61] In a 2009 poll by The Millions[62] a panel of writers, critics, and editors voted The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the eighth-best novel since 2000, and readers ranked it in first place.

"[67] In 2019, Repertorio Español produced La Breve y Maravillosa Vida de Oscar Wao, a Spanish-language adaptation of the novel at Gramercy Arts Theatre in New York.