All the way from Indiana--a package!

Look what came in the mail!

...it had to be inspected first.

...and then once again after I opened it...animals are so silly. 

Anyways, it's a copy of Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell, courtesy of Bev at My Reader's Block. In 2012 I participated in her Color Coded Reading Challenge, and was selected as a winner of sorts...so she gave me the option of choosing a book and I chose this one. Exciting because 1) I'm not one of those people who win things--ever (unless it's a competition) and 2) I love getting packages in the mail..

Reading List for Color Coded Reading Challenge 2012 

Thanks Bev!

Review - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
300+ pages

Description via Goodreads

What did you know about diaspora? What did you know about Nueba Yol or unheated 'old law' tenements or children whose self-hate short-circuited their minds? What did you know, madame, about immigration? Don't laugh, mi negrita, for your world is about to be changed. Utterly. Yes: a terrible beauty is etc., etc. Take it from me. You laugh because you've been ransacked to the limit of your soul, because your lover betrayed you almost onto death, because your first son was neverborn. You laugh because you have no front teeth and you've sworn never to smile again (160)

I read The Feast of the Goat not too long ago (click title for review) and I remember thinking how fear, shame and paranoia could spread through the oppressed and the oppressors for individuals in the moment and through generations over time. I have similar feelings about this book; it is a fictionalized account of the generations over time I was referring to. And I mention the Vargas Llosa because of the connection to Trujillo. There are footnotes about Trujillo all over the pages of 'Oscar Wao'. Trujillo's legacy of fear and hate is unleashed upon Oscar and his family, and it has diffused into Dominican culture on the island and in the community in the States.

While I feel Trujillo and things like fuku* are unique to Dominican culture initially, I believe they easily transpose to the American experience, and  the struggle with identity many young people face at some point in their lives, or throughout their lives. Oscar is the quintessential example of this: an overweight, ghetto nerd, living and breathing science fiction and fantasy culture and wallowing in self pity and degradation...and his biggest affront--he lacks that famous/infamous Dominican swagger. Poor Oscar is not the object of female affection...well no romantic affections anyways. He's a minority within a minority, a subculture within a subculture. I realize this doesn't sound like much at first, but this preoccupation with love and affection goes deeper than what it appears at the surface. It's present in the love-hate relationship between Oscar's sister, Lola, and their mother, Belicia. Oscar and himself. Lola and her boyfriends. Belicia and her past. Belicia and her family in the DR, Belicia and her mother-figure, La Inca, La Inca and her family, the family and Trujillo, the DR and Trujillo...once again, it's the fuku and the angst of society at work. 

Many of the characters in this book have dealt with pain or abuse of some form or another, but Diaz is able to spin threads of humor and realness into the dialogue and narrative, so the read as a whole isn't bogged down with misery. It's filled with playful generalizations, semi-colloquialisms, muted violence, brief dream sequences of a golden mongoose...the 'n-word' is said a lot--on par with the level of usage in the movie Django. It is colorful melancholy and strangely personal (...for me anyways) And while the ending isn't a happy one, it was certainly appropriate. This book is wonderful.

*fuku = curse, doom, superstitious powers, The Curse and Doom of the New World. 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Five stars.

Book Beginnings - The Bell Jar

Book Beginnings is a meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of a book you are currently reading, along with your initial thoughts and impressions about the sentence or book. Remember to include the title of the book and the author AND link up at the Rose City Reader

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. 

First, I have yet to read a poem* by Sylvia Plath that I haven't relished--and what can I say other than, this is my type of beginning...I'm reading The Bell Jar for a TBR challenge this year. I don't know how I went so long without reading a book that is seemingly right up my alley...I haven't officially started reading it yet, but plan on cracking it open sometime this weekend.

*The Applicant (click to read a great poem)

Poetry for thought - I Had Just Hung Up from Talking to You

I Had Just Hung Up from Talking to You
by Jessica Greenbaum

I had just hung up from talking to you
and we had been so immersed in the difficulty
you were facing, and forgive me,
I was thinking that as long as we kept talking,
you in your car in the parking lot of the boys’ school
as the afternoon deepened into early evening,
and me in the study, all the books around
that had been sources of beauty to us,
as long as we stayed in the conversation
padded with history like the floor of the pine forest,
as long as I thought out loud, made a joke
at my own expense, you would be harbored in that exchange,
but the boys were leaving the track
and after we hung up I looked out the window
to see the top of the bare January trees spotlit to silvery red,
massive but made from the thinnest
twigs at the ends of the branches at the ends of the limbs
they were waving and shining in a light
like no other and left only to them.

image: flickr-clogozm