Who wrote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?

Junot Díaz wrote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Published in 2007, Díaz’s first novel follows Oscar de León, an overweight Dominican American teenager in Paterson, New Jersey, who dreams of becoming a science-fiction and fantasy writer while searching for love. The story expands into a multigenerational account of his family and its relationship to the Dominican Republic.

A central motif is the fukú curse, a supernatural force said to have haunted the family for generations. Díaz combines that magical-realist element with historical discussion of Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship, immigrant identity, racism, sexuality, and the Dominican diaspora. The narration moves among different voices and uses English, Spanish, slang, footnotes, and genre references.

The novel became a major literary success. In 2008 it won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Although Díaz is sometimes grouped with other Dominican or Caribbean American writers, the novel’s author is specifically Junot Díaz, not Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, or Edwidge Danticat.