Annotation
"Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fuku - the ancient curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still dreaming of his first kiss, is only its most recent victim - until the fateful summer that he decides to be its last." "Junot Diaz immerses us in the uproarious lives of our hero Oscar, his runaway sister Lola, and their ferocious beauty-queen mother Belicia, and in the family's epic journey from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights to New Jersey's Bergenline and back again."--BOOK JACKET.
Awards
2007 National Book Critics Circle Awards
2008 Pulitzer Prize
2007 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
2007 Library Journal Best Books of the Year
2007 New York Times Notable Books of the Year
Author Notes
Junot Diaz is a professor of writing at MIT.
Characters
| Name | Wao, Oscar |
| Gender | Male |
| Traits | Overweight |
| Dominican American | |
| Genre | Fiction Domestic Psychological Sociological |
| Topics | Overweight persons Nationalism Dominicans Americans Dominican culture Curses Family histories Family relationships |
| Setting | New Jersey |