Junot Diaz wrote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, in which he highlights the history of the Dominican Republic and briefly the United States to describe superstitious aspects still present in the culture today. In the writing, Diaz introduces several colloquial terms such as: “fuku”,”fua”, and “zafa”. Despite enjoying the pleasant conversational tone of the work, certain references such as places and Spanish terms were lost on me. It was difficult reading through some of the text due to the switching into Spanish terms. I did not fully understand some of the sentences without looking up terms, even with the use of contextual clues. This distracted me from the flow of the story unfolding and required several rereads. A prime example being, “…every single Dominican, from the richest jabao in Mao to the poorest guey in El Buey, from the oldest anciano sanmacorisano to the littlest carajito in San Francisco, knew: whoever killed Trujillo, their family would suffer a fuku so dreadful it would make the one that attached itself to the Admiral jojote in comparison.” (3) Diaz is conveying how it was common knowledge amongst virtually all Dominicans from different walks of life, the stigma attached to merely attempting to end the life of the despot. While I did have difficulty with the references, it lent a personable aspect to Diaz’s writing, which further emphasized the conversational tone present through the work. Moreover, Diaz makes Science Fiction/Fantasy and pop culture references that he seems to assume his readers are familiar with and he does not clarify despite the presence of footnotes. Diaz writes, “But be assured: like Darkseid’s Omega Effect, like Morgoth’s bane, no matter how many turns and digressions the shit might take, it always-and I mean always-gets its man.”(5) It may not always be the most obvious result or direct path taken but the bad ju-ju eventually catches up to the intended person. The fuku curse, like karma always comes around to bite someone in the butt.
