In “The Brief, Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz, I did not really find anything confusing, or difficult to understand or comprehend. I like how Diaz fuses Dominican slang and formal English.I believe Diaz does this to appeal to a much wider audience, and that she accomplishes very well. The one thing that was somewhat “difficult” was the size of some of the footnotes. On the second page, there was one that was longer than the main text itself. Granted, it was a history lesson of the extent of Trujillo’s reign over the Dominican Republic. I also appreciate the “colorful” language Diaz uses in the beginning of the excerpt. “…uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open…”(1) Even though I am not 100% sure what Diaz is referring to in this sentence, I still get very vivid imagery, due to her word choice. This is executed perfectly in my opinion, it hooks the reader’s attention, whilst the author gets to the “meat”. I also like how the story Diaz is mentioning throughout the excerpt is bigger than itself. What Diaz is implying is that Trujillo, former dictator of the Dominican Republic, is the one who killed JFK. It somewhat caught me by surprise, in a good way, the way Diaz just blatantly says it. In all, I genuinely enjoy Diaz’ writing style. She found a way to take a history lesson, and spin it around to actually make it very interesting.
