Category: Portrait of a Word

Bacchanal

1) Sampah Masyarakat: Society’s trash/ useless people
2) Autis: discriminating people who has a childish/ unusual behavior by calling them “autistic”
3) anak di luar nikah: a child who was born outside of marriage, it is against the rules of religions in Indonesia
4) Kafir: non-believer, infidel. usually used to insult non-muslim people.

“Ambulance Driver”

Hi everybody! Good job on the quiz! I will have them graded by Thursday. I’m still working on your papers.

For Tuesday, I would like you to choose a word for your “Portrait of a Word” essay. (If you’re confused, see the essay assignment under UNITS on the website– it’s UNIT 2). You don’t need to start writing it yet! But you will need a word! Remember– this should be a word that is important to you and your community– an insider word (or possibly a short phrase)– in other words, a word that INCLUDES some people, but excludes others. This means you should also have some idea of what COMMUNITY you believe the word is inside of (and outside of.)  There’s more about this on the assignment sheet under UNITS.

Where do you look for a word? Could be slang that is important to you and your friend group, could be a word that is important in your family or ethnic community, a word specific to your language, this could be a word you have been called (even a derogatory word.) It could even be a name you have called other people, or a word only people in your community understand or are “allowed” to say. If you are stuck, pay attention this weekend to the words your friends and family use, the words in the songs you listen to, the words you say. 

You know what? That’s it. Come up with a word and post it on the OpenLab. by 10 am on Tuesday. That’s all! I had said there was another assignment, but I rescind it. Just post one word that you want to write an essay about. 

That said, it is very important you come up with that word!  It should be something you can spend some time with. Feel free to post more than one if you’re kind of on the fence and can’t decide.

In the story, “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz he shows a superstition from Santo Domingo called “fukú”. I found it to be a bit hard because of the fact that there were a lot of Spanish or slang  words so I had to keep looking the words up to see what they actually mean. But as I kept reading I kind of started to enjoy it.  I guess it was because of how Diaz was telling the history of “fuku.” The focus begins on the culture of “Fuku” which is known to be a type of curse or bad luck especially in Santo Domingo later on revolves around the power that it has to control others. I started to really enjoy it because its kind of like a horror story, he claims, “but the fuku aint just ancient history, a ghost story from the past with no power to scare.” (page 2) Diaz provided many examples of encounters with Fuku and thats really how the text had my full undivided attention. He said, “although you may not believe in Fuku it does exist, theres no way in escaping it and it works patiently  waiting for its next victim.” Made me start thinking about what else Fuku had the power of doing.

While reading, “The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao” I found myself very engaged being that the author, like I, was Dominican. Along with the fact that I was encountering a word that I had never before heard. I didn’t really find myself distracted with this one, since it had a numerous counts of humor in it with the occasional counts of spanglish in it, that made it overall easy to read. I hadn’t really found anything difficult, other than trying to wrap my head around the idea that some superstitious being was the cause of the misfortunate deaths and curses of many. In the text Diaz states, “that 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.” Diaz continues on explaining that nobody but the “fuku” was the cause of none other than Kennedy’s death being that he had green-lighted the assassination of Trujillo, which in turn caused this so called “fuku” to unleash its wrath upon him. I found the text to be most disturbing at certain points like the one where Diaz kind of directs his attention to the skeptists and non-believers, where he states, “It’s perfectly fine if you don’t believe in these “superstitions.” In fact, it’s better than fine–it’s perfect. Because no matter what you believe, fuku believes in you.” With this line alone I found myself in a combustion of feelings, like those of confusion, worry, and dread.

While reading “The brief and notorious life of Oscar Wao” by Junot D íaz, I found the text easy to read whereas some of the word choice was a bit hard. I think the hardest thing for me in this article really was the fact that there were a lot of Spanish or slang  words which would throw me off of my groove.”Everybody knew someone who had been eaten by a fukù, just like everybody knew somebody that worked up in Palacio.“(3). Though this sentence for me was n’t the hardest I still for some reason found myself re-reading the words more than once, because I couldn’t just figure it out from the context clues for some reason. Once I was able to get past my challenges reading certain words I found the lore about the fukù to be extremely intriguing and pulled me in enough to be able to continue on to the footnotes. I found the footnotes to be my favorite part of the reading because of the way Diaz spoke about the history kept me captivated with their crude and at times vulgar tongue “A portly, sadistic, pig-eyed melato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and had a fondness for Napoleon – era haberdashery, Trujillo …. came to control nearly every aspect of the DR is the political-cultural social and economic life through a potent (and familiar) mixture of violence, intimidation, massacre, rape, cooperation, and terror,  treated the country like it was a plantation and he was the master”. (3) The more Diaz described Trujillo the more I pictured a genocide that I was never fully aware of happened. Diaz was able to teach me some of the histories and loop it into the text beautifully by saying that many people believed that he succeeds so well because of his pack with the fukù. As for me well, I think it’s just the human want to be able to believe in something magical, or they want to have an unknown force be able to take the blame for your faults in life.

The excerpt from “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz  made me a little bored at first. Then when  surprisingly later it became  interesting  that I found myself wanting to read more about the “fuku.” I guess it was because of how Diaz was telling the history of “fuku.” That he wrote in a style that seemed less  formal but is  like  more natural and humorous. The sentence that took me by surprise and made me laugh was “who killed JFK? Let me, your humble Watcher, reveal one and for all the God’s Honest Truth: It wasn’t the mob or the ghost of Marilyn fucking Monroe.”(4) If it was me i wouldn’t write as much curse words in my writing. Be after reading Diaz’s work i would like to write like him and how he writes to catch the audiences eyes.  I believe in superstitions, even when my grandparents told me about the superstitions in Poland I would always listen closely to what they were saying. But the way Diaz described ‘fuku’ by asking who killed JFK and were the curse of the Kennedy’s came from and  talking about his family’s personal ‘fuku’ experience. This help me believe that other people believed in the same thing. I like how he didn’t really put much thought into using academic words but as if he was talking to a friend about it.

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.

While reading “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Woo” by Junior Diaz, I didn’t really find anything that was confusing or difficult to understand. In fact, I enjoyed reading because I am Dominican myself. I found this piece very humorous and relatable because I know how us Dominicans can be with superstitions. I couldn’t help but think about my grandmother and all the superstitions she has made us aware of when he stated, “I have a tia who believed she’d been denied happiness because she’d laughed at a rival’s funeral.”(5)  Yeah, that definitely sounds like something my grandmother would say. I also enjoyed his style of writing. I always enjoy pieces like this where you don’t feel overwhelmed by the language that is being used. It almost feels like you’re just having a normal conversation with someone. It also makes it easier to get the message that the author is trying to convey without having to question what it is that they’re trying to say. One thing that caught my attention as well is how loose he is with cursing in his writing. As a writer, I always stray away from cursing because you never know how a reader would react to it. I can honestly say that Diaz knows what he is doing, he really knows how to keep readers hooked and interested.