The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Finally got finished with Oscar and enjoyed my time with him thoroughly. if you haven't read the book, i highly recommend it -what a read. Diaz's tone throughout the story is just golden. Very funny with some real great stuff underneath and within the humor.

There are two really dope parts of the book that I wanted to highlight. The first is the quotation that Diaz uses in the beginning from a poem by Derek Walcott called, "The Schooner Flight." I had never heard of Derek Walcott before and thought that the lines Diaz picked for the introduction of the book were genius:

"Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!

From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road

to when I was a dog on these streets;

if loving these islands must be my load,

out of corruption my soul takes wings,

But they had started to poison my soul

with their big house, big car, big-time bohbohl,

coolie, nigger, Syrian, and French Creole,

so I leave it for them and their carnival-

I taking a sea bath, I gone down the road.

I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,

a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes

that they nickname Shabine, the patois for

any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw

when these slums of empire was paradise.

I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,

I had a sound colonial eduation,

I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,

and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation."

The second part comes from the the last few lines of the story:

"Maybe, she said, you could call it life.) He wrote: So this is what everybody's always talking about! Diablo! if only i'd known. The beauty! The beauty!"

While the whole book was wonderful, those last lines really represent how i feel about life right now. i'm blessed beyond imagination, and it's the most beautiful thing i could ask for.