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Extended EssayHow is the fukú a metaphor for colonialism in Junot Diaz’s The

Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?

Candidate name: Immaculata AbbaMay 2016

Word Count: 3852

English A Category 1

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my family, friends and teachers: especially Dave Booker and Julia Evans, for their guidance and support.

I used the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style for my citations and bibliography.

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Abstract

The purpose of my essay is to analyse Junot Diaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and answer the question of ‘How is the fukú a metaphor of colonialism in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?’ This exploration consisted of an independent analysis of the novel and it’s use of metaphors and symbols, a lot of background research on the author, on the novel (such as Emily Shifflette’s The Novel Mezclada: Subverting Colonialism ’ s Legacy in Junot Diaz ’ s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ) and on the colonial history of the Dominican Republic.

One of the issues the novel confronts is the continuing impact of colonialism on the Dominican Republic and it illustrates how this impact affected and continues to affect the De León family. Even though in the Dominican Republic today, colonialism is history, its effects such as inter-cultural conflicts and government instability can be found in contemporary Dominican Republic and this is illustrated in Diaz’s novel.

In the novel, a direct link is made between the fukú and colonialism. From the start, the fukú is recognised as a product of the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola and as a real and viable reason to which Dominicans attribute their misfortunes. This sparked my interest to understand what ways the fukú can be connected to colonialism and post-colonial governments in the Dominican Republic, especially the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo and how this has affected individuals and their families in the Dominican Republic. The fukú is found to be a starting point in understanding colonialism in the Dominican Republic because it serves as a provisional metaphor Dominicans came up with as a reflection of the expression of colonialism in their lives and their history.

(Word count: 294)

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ContentsHow is the fukú a metaphor for colonialism in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?..............................................................................................................1

Acknowledgement....................................................................................................................2

Abstract....................................................................................................................................3

Introduction:...........................................................................................................................5About the fukú....................................................................................................................6The Fukú, Colonialism and the Trujillo Dictatorship:......................................................7Effects of The Fukú, colonialism and Trujillo’s dictatorship............................................8

Conclusion:.........................................................................................................................12Bibliography...........................................................................................................................13

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Introduction:

In the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the author tells a trans-generational story of the life of the eponymous Oscar Wao, set in New Jersey, USA and the Dominican Republic. This story highlights different aspects of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives in the era of the dictator Trujillo which have, in one way or another, affected Oscar’s life significantly. In telling the story of Oscar and his family, the author also tells the history of The Dominican Republic, albeit mostly with the aid of long footnotes, thereby putting the story of an individual in perspective with the story of the country.

He starts the novel by introducing the idea of Fukú americanus or ‘fukú’ as it is commonly called. According to the novel, the legend of the fukú is one that arose from the colonial history of the Dominican Republic. It is regarded as ‘the Curse and Doom of the New World’1 and believed that ‘the arrival of Europeans [in 1492]2 on Hispaniola unleashed the fukú on the world.’3 The author explained in an interview that “The fukú was…the one curse that explicitly implicated the historical trauma of our creation, as an area, a people.”4 and the creation of the legend is evidence of how language affects.l;m ‘how they look at their culture, at their politics and at their entire relationship to nature and to other beings.’5 A book of Dominican lingo, Obras Lexicografas, confirms the fukú to be an expression for ‘bad luck, misfortune or a curse’ used by Dominicans.6

It is clear to see how the legend of the fukú embodies the claim many post-colonial writers l;have made on language as culture being ‘the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history,’7 and in this case, a history of colonisation.

The fukú in this novel is used as a metaphor for colonialism to highlight the origin, manifestation and impact of colonialism in the Dominican Republic and its repercussions on individuals, on families and on the psychology of the country as a collective community. In analysing this metaphor through an independent analysis of the novel combined with secondary research into the fukú, colonialism and Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, post-colonial literature, this essay attempts to uncover the meanings and implications of the fukú as told in this novel. This gives insight to the social effects of colonialism and dictatorships, particularly in the Dominican Republic.

About the fukúBy starting the book with an explanation of the legend of the fukú, the author introduces the legend as a very important and omnipresent aspect of life for Dominicans. This introduction

1 Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (London: Faber, 2009), 12 History.com Staff. "Columbus Lands in South America - Aug 01, 1498." HISTORY.com. Last modified 2010. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbus-lands-in-south-america.3 Díaz, Oscar Wao, 14 "BOMB Magazine — Junot Díaz by Edwidge Danticat." BOMB Magazine. Last modified October 2007. http://bombmagazine.org/article/2948/.5NgũgĩWa Thiongʼo, "The Language of African Literature." In Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. (London: J. Currey, 1986), 166 Rabecca Hoffman, "Fact Checking: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz," last modified December 1, 2009, http://mysite.pratt.edu/~rhoffman/files/factcheck.pdf.7 Wa Thiong’o, “The Language of African Literature”, 15

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is important because in it he explains key elements of colonialism using the fukú as a metaphor. He starts by directly naming the source of the fukú as the “discovering” of Hispaniola by Europeans and the subsequent colonisation of Hispaniola whose far-reaching effects the entire area has struggled -and continues to struggle- with politically, socially, and psychologically.

That “no one knows whether Trujillo was the Curse’s servant or its master, its agent or its principal, but it was clear he and it had an understanding, that two of them was tight.”8

highlights the undeniable connection between colonial governments and the post-independent military dictatorships that came as a direct consequence of political instability which plagued most newly independent states as a result of the difficulty in applying and maintaining the government systems left by colonisers. The fukú metaphor is extended by the personification of ‘The Curse’ in the quote above which emphasises its significance and power. It is also mentioned in the introduction that the Trujillo dictatorship was backed by the US government and this connects the US as a neo-coloniser of the Dominican Republic.

The extension of the fukú metaphor is continued as the introduction explains that ‘it was in the air, you could say, though, like all the most important things on the Island, not something folks really talked about.’9 This metaphor highlights the pervasive silence on affairs of the state borne out of a political fatigue that is common with a people who carry a history of repetitive political violence and have been, for so long, unable to change their situation. Another social dimension to the fukú is shown in ‘No matter what you believe, fukú believes in you.’10 This personification of the fukú attributes power to the legend and reflects the fate of the curse that every Dominican, by virtue of citizenship, is bound to go through. Whether as victims of a brutal military dictatorship or as Dominicans in diaspora, the characters in the novel are seen to suffer the all-encompassing and pervasive impacts of colonialism and Trujillo’s dictatorship through the symbol of the fukú.

There are other repercussions of the fukú which are not explicitly indicated in the Introductory chapter but that are analogous to colonialism and will be looked at in this essay. One of such repercussions is the way the fukú manifests itself is in the discrimination against dark skinned people and this is analogous to the current and historical issue of racism in the Dominican Republic11. The other repercussions are in the form of abuse and ‘paginas en blanco’ or blank pages [in history] which highlights colonisers’ attempts to erase or silence the history of the people of its colonies as well as dictators’ attempts to control the press and authorship in their countries.This essay is going to explore these different facets and repercussions of the fukú and how this is used as a metaphor for colonialism, and subsequently dictatorships, in the Dominican Republic.

The Fuk ú , Colonialism and the Trujillo Dictatorship: The novel starts by linking the fukú to colonialism as it explains that ‘the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the fukú on the world’12 as an allusion to the arrival of

8 Díaz, Oscar Wao, 39 Ibid., 210 Ibid., 511 David Howard, "Development, Racism, and Discrimination in the Dominican Republic," Development in Practice 17, no. 6 (2007): 725-738, accessed September 19, 2015, doi:10.1080/09614520701628097. 12 Diaz, Oscar Wao,1

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Spanish conquistadors in 1492 which paved the way for colonialism in Hispaniola. The fukú is also known as the ‘fukú of the Admiral’13 and ‘the Admiral’ is an allusion to Christopher Columbus, who ‘discovered’ Hispaniola. This refusal to mention the Admiral’s full name is as a result of the belief that ‘the Admiral’s very name has become synonymous with both kinds of fukú, little and large; to say his name aloud or even to hear it is to invite calamity. ’14

Non-fictional evidence to this belief could be found in Diccionario de Cultura y Folklore Dominicano in which it is explained that Dominicans avoid mentioning the name of the curse15. This reflects the fear the indigenous Taínos had of the conquistadors who started exploiting them and partitioning them as slaves to Spanish owners.16 This fear was inherited by future generations of Dominicans such as Juan (the owner of a Chinese restaurant in which Beli worked at) saying that ‘the Brothers Then had changed [the name of the restaurant which was formerly called El Tesoro de__ ] when they learned that the Admiral’s name was a fukú.’17 This hints at the pervasive fear of colonial government that Dominicans had.Four centuries and several changes of hand in the colonial rule of the Dominican Republic came the neo-colonial US Occupation of the Dominican Republic which influenced the rise of Trujillo as president18 from 1930 to 1938 and 1942 to 1952.19 One of the marks of colonialism was that it imposed systems of government different from that which the colonies were accustomed to. This led to political conflict within the colonies especially after gaining their independence and these political conflicts often give rise to military dictatorial governments who rise to power in attempt to solve the conflicts. The implicit meaning of this line “No one knows whether Trujillo was the Curse’s servant or its master but it was clear he and it had an understanding, that them two was tight.”20 shows the relationship between the fukú and Trujillo. In the novel Trujillo was seen as either superior, equal or subordinate to the fukú. He was seen as a servant of the fukú because his government was caused and controlled by the over-reaching hand of colonialism. This also reflects the people’s belief that ‘he was protected by the most evil fukú on the Island’21 because of how immune he had a lot of power and support from powerful countries like the US. Sometimes in the novel he was explicitly called the fukú, hence seen as equal to the fukú: “It was Trujillo; it was the fukú.”22

Other times, because he was able to control the fukú: “[He] would incur a fukú most powerful on anyone…”23 he was seen as superior to the fukú. An example of this is the story of the misfortunes (arrest, torture and killing) Abelard’s family went through. It is a story which “always begins in the same place: with Abelard and the Bad Thing he said about Trujillo”24 and this is an illustration of some of the realities Dominicans had to face as a result of colonialism and especially in the era of Trujillo. The use of ‘Bad Thing’ to allude to the fukú echoes the belief many Dominicans had/have in the superstition of calling the curse by

13 Ibid., 114 Ibid., 115 Hoffman, “Fact Checking”, 416 Emily Shifflette, "The Novel Mezclada: Subverting Colonialism’s Legacy in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Donors Thesis Projects, University of Tennessee, 2010. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1359. pg 617 Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (London: Faber, 2009), 10518 Emily Holtzman, "Indispensable Lives: Magical Realism and Postcolonial Resistance in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." Master's thesis, University of Missouri System, 2015. https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/45473/EmilyHoltzmanThesis.pdf?sequence=1. pg 1119 History.com staff. "Rafael Trujillo - Facts & Summary." HISTORY.com. Last modified 2009. http://www.history.com/topics/rafael-trujillo.20 Díaz, Oscar Wao, 221 Ibid., 22622 Ibid., 423 Ibid., 324 Ibid., 212

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its name25. Even though ‘the Europeans were the original fukú,’26 Trujillo proved to as harmful and threatening to the Dominicans. This is illustrated even further by the narrator when he says: “In the old days it had been the white kids who had been the chief tormentors, but now it was kids of colour who performed the necessaries.”27 In this passage, he was literally referring to the students in Oscar’s class when Oscar was teaching at a school back home in the Dominican Republic and how Oscar had to watch some students bully other students. However, it makes a perfect metaphor for the colonial and dictatorial governments in the Dominican Republic, with the ‘white kids’ representing the colonial government and the ‘kids of colour’ representing the Dominican dictators. This shows how the origin of colonialism, its evolution into neo-colonialism and dictatorships and the terror inspired by all three stages are symbolised by the fukú.

Effects of The Fuk ú , colonialism and Trujillo ’ s dictatorship The first point to be established is that as a Dominican, as the narrator points out in the introduction, “the fukú believes in you.” The personification of the fukú here elevates the fukú to a substance of power. The line is a metaphor for the fact that Dominicans experience some of the effects of the fukú (whether as an effect of colonialism or Trujillo’s dictatorship). Once, the narrator says of the fukú to Oscar “I do not believe in that shit, Oscar. That’s our parents’ shit.”28 as though the fukú and its effects can be relegated and confined to the past. However, like history and politics which the fukú is definitely related to, the curse can not be ignored; Oscar replies “It’s ours too.”29 This is true because the fukú has become part of the Dominican culture and the narrator shows in the introduction that the fukú is seen as a real, viable rationale Dominicans attribute any perceived evil or misfortune, from having no male child in a family of 12 children to being depressed.30 Looking at the lives of the main characters in the novel: Oscar, Lola, Beli, Yunior and La Inca, it is evident how the fukú lives on from generation to generation. In other words, how colonialism has affected the people of the Dominican Republic from one generation to the next. To begin with, Oscar, Lola and Yunior were not yet born in the era of Trujillo and Beli lived most of her life after Trujillo died and so most of the events of the novel happened after Trujillo died. Yet, we see the mark of Trujillo’s dictatorship or colonialism on every character and every event in the novel.

Oscar’s story is a fukú story31 and it tells the life of Oscar and how the fukú has affected his progenitors’ lives before him and hence his life as well. The story spans three generations. Referring to the fukú, the narrative voice explains that “when the family talks about it at all -which is like never- they always beginning the same place: with Abelard and the Bad Thing he said about Trujillo”32 to which he explains in a footnote ‘there are other beginnings certainly, better ones, to be sure- if you ask me I would have started when the Spaniards “discovered” the New World- or when the U.S. invaded Santo Domingo in 1916- but if this was the opening that the de Leóns chose for themselves, then who am I to question their historiography.’33 His sarcastic tone highlights the irony of how colonialists established their arrival as the beginning of history in the colonies. The narrator’s comment also shows that while there is a larger fukú story, there is also a fukú story for each Dominican family and

25 Hoffman, “Fact Checking”, 426 Diaz, Oscar Wao, 244 (footnote #29)27 Ibid., 26428 Ibid.,19429 Ibid.,19430 Ibid., 531 Ibid., 632 Ibid., 21133 Ibid., 211

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which is the first time the first major contact the family has with either the colonial or dictatorial governments. For the de Leóns, the story starts with Abelard Luis Cabral, Oscar’s grandfather from his mother’s side, when he refused to ‘cough up his muchachas’ to satisfy Trujillo’s ‘insatiable appetites’ and how he allegedly said the words “Trujillo must have cleaned them out for me” when he was drunk.34 Shorty after, Dr. Abelard Luis Cabral was arrested by the Secret Police and it was believed that “out of spite [Trujillo] put a fukú on the family’s ass” because less than a year after, Socorro (his wife) committed suicide Esteban (the family’s servant) was killed, Lydia (his mistress) died, Jackie and Astrid (his other two daughters) were killed by drowning and by a stray bullet respectively.35 Beli, who was born two months before her mother died, surely suffered the fukú as well. For one, she was born dark-skinned and this was regarded as a curse.36 Before she was a year old, she was sold by family relatives who had taken custody of her as a domestic slave for nine years of which she was unable to talk about for the next forty years of her life. Belí’s story sheds some light on what life in the Dominican Republic looked like for Dominicans under Trujillo. It was a society in which ‘the buying and selling of children [was] common enough’37, where the mention of Trujillo’s name could incur such devastating consequences and where it was ‘not the best time to be a lover of Ideas, not the best time to be engaging in political debates…’38 Using Abelard as an illustration of the devastating consequences mentioning Trujillo’s name could incur, his imprisonment “turned him into a vegetable. The proud flame of his intellect extinguished.”39

Using the fukú as a symbol for the Cabral family’s misfortune, the narrator shows that for the people living in the Trujillo era, it was a time of deep dissatisfaction, political fatigue, fear and silence because any slight political action would be done at the risk of one’s life and the lives of those dear to one, possibly to his/her seventh generation and beyond40.

This fear and state of insecurity, coupled with neo-colonization and unequal power dynamic created between the US and the Dominican Republic, drove many Dominicans to consider leaving the Dominican Republic, especially for the US. Beli is an example: when she begins her affair with the Gangster, we find her ‘dismissing her barrio as an “infierno” and her neighbours as “brutos” and ‘cochinos,” she bragged about how she would be living in Miami soon, would not have to put up with this un-country much longer.’41 This was a mindset that resulted in the Dominican diaspora, which in itself is also seen as a manifestation of the fukú by Dominicans like the narrator’s grandfather who believed ‘that [the] diaspora was Trujillo’s payback to the pueblo that betrayed him.’42 In reality, the mass emigration of Dominicans implies a brain drain from the country which is unhelpful to the economy and government. Also, for Beli a better life was not waiting on the other side of the border. Dominicans in diaspora have to deal with separation from their family at home and in the case of the De Leons family, they try to resolve this issue with occasional trips to Santo Domingo to stay with La Inca, the relative who found and raised Beli. Like Oscar’s family, they have to grapple with political issues such as economic marginalisation, racism, cultural differences and experiences of rootlessness. The novel suggests that ‘Beli’s attempt at escaping by immigrating to the USA does not move her or her family any further away from the fukú (or misfortune in general), since the source of the curse is the imperial power itself.’43 This shows yet another facet of the fukú as a representation of colonialism and its trans-generational effects.

34 Ibid., 23535 Ibid., 24936 Ibid., 24837 Ibid., 25338 Ibid., 21439 Ibid., 25140 Ibid., 341 Ibid.,12842 Ibid., 2

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Oscar, for one, struggles with this experience of rootlessness until ‘he listened.’44 His listening serves as a metaphor for his coming to terms with his history, his family’s history and the Dominican Republic’s history with the fukú and this is crucial to his struggle for his self-fulfilment, self-understanding and understanding of his family and environment. In this way, Oscar personifies the cultural hybridity which is fraught with cultural contradiction and incongruity that comes from the forceful intersection of cultures such as colonialism and emigration. Oscar needed to ‘listen’ in the first place because of a culture of silence that the fukú (colonialism) perpetuates. American scholars Hammond and Jablow, in talking about the unknown histories of colonised places, argue that ‘a vested interest in the slave trade produced a literature of devaluation.’45 and this is supported by Frantz Fanon’s claim in one of his seminal books on Post-colonialism, that colonialism not only “empties the native brain of all form and content [but also] turns the past of oppressed people and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.”46 This is apparent in Oscar’s fukú story through his grandfather’s (Abelard Cabral) ordeal with Trujillo. Through Abelard, we can also see how the ‘the past of oppressed people can be distorted and destroyed.’ There’s a pattern of lost history that flows through the narrative in the novel and in the Dominican Republic. The narrator, when talking about Abelard’s arrest, points out that ‘We are trawling in silences.’47 because ‘Trujillo and company did not leave a paper trail… [and] it’s not like the fukú itself would leave a memoir.’48 The narrator uses the phrase “Paginas en blanco” refer to missing bits in history that are not available in popular documentation or literature and this is found in the history of the Dominican Republic and the history of Oscar’s family. “Paginas en blanco” is one of the most significant expressions of the culture of silence perpetuated by colonialism and so prevented colonised people from finding out more about their own history beyond the arrival of colonialists. When Oscar tries to understand himself and life around him, he has a dream of an old man standing before him, holding a blank book. The man and the blank book represent Abelard and the pagina en blancos in their family history which Oscar has to discover for himself. These blank pages include all the memory of life under Trujillo Beli was not able to reveal to anyone for more than 40 years. Even the narrator admits that he has his own paginas en blancos: the missing bits of history in the story he is telling, because there is so much information that is inaccessible to him. Acknowledging the different possible beginnings of the fukú story symbolises the difference in historical narratives held by native Dominicans and the historical narratives driven by the Spanish conquistadors, neo-colonialist US and Trujillo’s dictatorship. His incapability to complete these blank pages reflect the difficulty in recovering lost history49 and for the future generation as symbolised by Lola’s daughter, he plans on keeping an archive of her history for when ‘she will come looking for answers.’50 In order for Oscar (and eventually Lola’s daughter) to understand the fukú, it is necessary to come in terms with his/her history and this symbolises the idea of reclaiming one’s history that is prevalent in post-colonial thought. In this way, the issue of dealing the fukú is a metaphor for dealing with colonial heritage.43 Anne Garland Mahler, ‘The Writer as Superhero: Fighting the Colonial Curse in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 119-140 44 Ibid., 30745 Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow, The Africa That Never Was. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland Press, 1992.46 Frantz Fanon and Constance Farrington, The Wretched of the Earth: Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. London [u.a.]: (Penguin Books, 1990),16947 Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (London: Faber, 2009), 24348 Ibid., 24349 Emily Shifflette, "The Novel Mezclada: Subverting Colonialism’s Legacy in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Donors Thesis Projects, University of Tennessee, 2010. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1359, 1250 Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (London: Faber, 2009), 330

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Other aspects of the fukú which serve as a metaphor for colonialism (and, by implication, Trujillo’s dictatorship) are abuse and colorism. The first sign of the evil of fukú on the family was that Beli was born black.51 This represents colorism in the Dominican Republic and studies have shown that this colorism is traced back to colonialism and slave trade.52

Evidence of colorism is also found in contemporary Dominican history when, Trujillo advocated for the “whitening” of the Dominican Republic53 by slaughtering about 20,000 people of African descent in the 1937 Haitian Massacre. The theme of abuse is also one that is pervasive in the book as almost all relationships in the book -Trujillo and Abelard, Beli and the Gangster, Yunior and the females in his life, Beli and Lola, Oscar and Ybón and the cop - are marked with emotional or physical abuse. The narrator once, when speaking of the ‘gleeful sadism’ with which some of Oscar students bullied each other, mentioned that ‘white supremacy and people-of-colour self-hate never change.’54 This self-hate is also mirrored by Lola’s comment that ‘Ten million Trujillos is all we are.’55 Both themes of abuse and colorism, which are attributed to colonialism, are shown to be direct consequences of the fukú and this extends the metaphor of the fuku as a representation of colonialism in the Dominican Republic.

Conclusion : The author affirms from the start that Oscar’s story is a fukú story and this begs the question of what way is Oscar’s story a fukú story. The reader finds that this is because the fukú is a metaphor for colonialism, Trujillo’s dictatorship (by implication) and their effects on the Dominican Republic and its citizens. This metaphor is created and extended through the use of allusions, an informal style of writing peppered with irony and sarcasm and a lot of symbols. The fukú is indeed a viable way through which some Dominicans express their misfortunes. In the case of Oscar and his family, these misfortunes include living under Trujillo’s dictatorship which was supported by US invasion as a result of conflicts resulting from colonialism, the fear and terror incited by dictatorial governments in the Dominican

51 Ibid., 24852 Margaret Hunter, "The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality," Blackwell Publishing Ltd, last modified 2007, http://http:/www.mills.edu/academics/faculty/soc/mhunter/The%20Persistent%20Problem%20of%20Colorism.pdf.53 Pedro L. San Miguel, The Imagined Island: History, Identity, and Utopia in Hispaniola. Translated by Jane Ramírez. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.54 Diaz, Oscar Wao, 26455 Ibid., 324

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Republic which eventually led to the growth of the Dominican diaspora and the resulting struggle to preserve one’s history and heritage. These misfortunes and the way Oscar’s family attempt to solve them are explicitly attributed to the fukú thereby drawing a parallel between the fukú and colonialism as this essay has shown.Though the writer affirms from the start that Oscar’s story is a fukú story, he considers his writing of the story to be a counterspell (zafa)56 to the fukú. This raises a possible question for further research of how literature can parry with colonialism and dictatorships. To quote the narrator, ‘Dictators, in my opinion, just know competition when they see it. Same with writers.’57

Bibliography Cambeira, Alan. Quisqueya la Bella: The Dominican Republic in Historical and Cultural Perspective. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. 

Danticat, Edwidge. "BOMB Magazine — Junot Díaz by Edwidge Danticat." BOMB Magazine. Last modified October 2007. http://bombmagazine.org/article/2948/.

Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. London: Faber, 2009. [object HTMLInputElement]. 

Fanon, Frantz, and Constance Farrington. The Wretched of the Earth: Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. London [u.a.]: Penguin Books, 1990. 

56 Ibid ^ 757 Ibid ^ 97 (Footnote 11)

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Hammond, Dorothy, and Alta Jablow. The Africa That Never Was. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland Press, 1992. 

History.com Staff. "Columbus Lands in South America - Aug 01, 1498." HISTORY.com. Last modified 2010. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbus-lands-in-south-america.

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Holtzman, Emily. "Indispensable Lives: Magical Realism and Postcolonial Resistance in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." Master's thesis, University of Missouri System, 2015. https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/45473/EmilyHoltzmanThesis.pdf?sequence=1. 

Howard, David. "Development, Racism, and Discrimination in the Dominican Republic." Development in Practice 17, no. 6 (2007): 725-738. Accessed September 19, 2015. doi:10.1080/09614520701628097.

Hunter, Margaret. "The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality." Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Last modified 2007. http://http:/www.mills.edu/academics/faculty/soc/mhunter/The%20Persistent%20Problem%20of%20Colorism.pdf.

Kim-Kort, Mihee. "Putting Down Roots: Community in Diaspora." Unbound. Last modified May 21, 2014. http://justiceunbound.org/carousel/putting-down-roots-community-in-diaspora/.

Riaz, Hana. "This Is How You Find Yourself: Junot Diaz, Diasporic Narratives and Decolonising Literature." Ceasefire Magazine. Last modified October 24, 2012. https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/find-yourself-junot-diaz-diasporic-narratives-decolonizing-literature/.

San Miguel, Pedro L. The Imagined Island: History, Identity, and Utopia in Hispaniola. Translated by Jane Ramírez. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. 

Shifflette, Emily. "The Novel Mezclada: Subverting Colonialism’s Legacy in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Donors Thesis Projects, University of Tennessee, 2010.http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1359,

Wa Thiongʼo, Ngũgĩ. "The Language of African Literature." In Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: J. Currey, 1986.Mahler, Anne Garland, ‘The Writer as Superhero: Fighting the Colonial Curse in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 August 2010, 119-140. Accessed September 25, 2015. Doi: 10.1080/13569325.2010.494928

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