Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Writer as Superhero: Fighting the Colonial Curse in Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569325.2010.494928

1469-9575

Anne Garland Mahler,

Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements Many readers have kindly provided editorial suggestions for this paper. I'd especially like to thank Dierdra Reber for her highly critical readings of countless drafts as well as Joshua Lund and Melissa González for their insightful comments. Notes 1 In a biographical entry entitled 'Junot Díaz (1968-)' from Latino and Latina Writers (2004), Jacqueline Loss discusses Díaz's short story 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,' which was published in 2000 in The New Yorker and which would serve as the precursor for Díaz's later novel by outlining the basic storyline of Oscar's quest for love. Although Loss acknowledges the presence of colonial history in this short story and comments that Díaz 'considers the significance of the historical archive on a variety of levels' (2004: 812), Loss's relatively brief article, which is primarily focused on Drown, does not follow this assertion with analysis. The themes that Loss identifies in Díaz's short story are developed further in the novel, and it is my objective to give them an in-depth analysis in this essay. 2 Yunior claims that the US military failure in Vietnam resulted from the invasion of the Dominican Republic shortly beforehand, saying that the soldiers would carry with them to Saigon '[j]ust a little gift from my people to America, a small repayment for an unjust war. That's right, folks. Fukú' (Díaz 2007 Díaz, Junot. 2007. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, New York: Riverhead Books. [Google Scholar]: 4). He also attributes the fukú with the curse on the Kennedy family, the punishment for the Kennedy administration's alleged involvement in Trujillo's assassination (ibid). Additionally, he claims that the fukú caused Columbus's death (1). Thus, although Díaz identifies colonialism, and the continuation of colonialist relations of power through US imperialism, to be the source of the fukú, it appears that, according to the logic of the novel, even the imperial power can fall victim to the very curse it has unleashed. 3 Certainly there are other possible influences for the creation of this faceless character which could include, among others, the episode entitled 'The Faceless Ones' from Doctor Who Doctor Who. The Faceless Ones. Season 4, first broadcast April 8–May 13, 1967, by BBC One. Directed by Gerry Mill and written by David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke. [Google Scholar], one of Oscar's favorite TV shows, in which faceless aliens attempt to steal the identity of humans, or The Faceless One, an alien villain from Marvel Comics' 1970s series Astonishing Tales Lee, Stan, Thomas, Roy and Wood, Wally. 1970. Astonishing Tales, New York: Marvel Comics. 1, no. 2 [Google Scholar]. The Watchmen series, however, features prominently in the novel and is widely recognized as one of the most influential publications in comic book history, 'the magnum opus of superhero comic books' (Wright 2001 Wright, Bradford W. 2001. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar]: 271) and winner in 1988 of the prestigious Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Society. For this reason, I will concentrate on the faceless character's relationship to the influential Watchmen series and to its central protagonist Rorschach. 4 Although the novel is saturated with fantasy, comic book, Japanese anime, Greek mythology, literary and Biblical references, the other most significant texts that appear in the novel, or the other two of Oscar's 'top three' are J.R.R. Tolkien's Tolkien, J. R. R. 1954–55. The Lord of the Rings, London: George Allen & Unwin. [Google Scholar] The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's comic series The Fantastic Four Kirby, Jack and Lee, Stan. 1963. The Fantastic Four Versus the Red Ghost and His Indescribable Super Apes!. Fantastic Four, 1, no. 13. New York: Marvel Comics [Google Scholar] (1961–96). Díaz references these two texts continuously throughout the novel. For example, Díaz correlates the political structure of the Trujillo regime with the hierarchy of villainous power in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. While Trujillo is consistently compared to the arch-villain Sauron (Díaz 2007 Díaz, Junot. 2007. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, New York: Riverhead Books. [Google Scholar]: 157), his most influential government officials, Johnny Abbes, Joaquín Balaguer, and Félix Bernardino, are 'the regime's three witchkings' (ibid., 121). 5 A long line of faceless comic book characters preceded Moore and Gibbons's creation of Rorschach. Moore claims that Rorschach is specifically based on the faceless character called 'The Question' from Steve Ditko's Ditko, Steve. 1967. Blue Beetle 1, Derby: Charlton Comics. [Google Scholar] Charlton Comics, a character who first appeared in the June 1967 issue of Blue Beetle. Nearly all of the characters that appear in Watchmen were appropriated from Charlton Comics. The incorporation of classic, morally upright superheroes from Charlton Comics served Moore and Gibbons's ultimate goal of recreating traditional heroes, showing their true tyrannical nature, in order to critique the concept of the superhero (Cooke 2000 Cooke, Jon B. 2000. Toasting Absent Heroes: Alan Moore Discusses the Charlton-Watchmen Connection. Comic Book Artist 9 (August), http://www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/09moore.html. [Google Scholar]). 6 The flawed superhero was an established icon long before Watchmen. For example, Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spiderman Ditko, Steve and Lee, Stan. 1963–98. The Amazing Spiderman, New York: Marvel Comics. [Google Scholar] (1963–98), had, since the early 1960s, appealed to a troubled cold war era youth that viewed the traditional WWII superheroes, like Superman and Captain America, as overly-simplistic and triumphalist. However, these flawed superheroes still exhibited unequivocal morality, refraining from hurting innocent people and generally respecting the law (Wright 2001 Wright, Bradford W. 2001. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar]: 218–19). Watchmen would take the superhero's flaws to another level, creating characters such as The Comedian, who rapes a fellow superhero and kills a pregnant woman. 7 Kevane cites Díaz's editorial introduction from The Beacon Best of 2001 (Díaz 2001 Díaz, Junot. 2001. Introduction to The Beacon Best of 2001: Great Writing by Women and Men of All Colors and Cultures, Edited by: Díaz, Junot. vii–xi. Boston: Beacon Press. [Google Scholar]: vii). 8 In addition to the metaphorical implications of Ysrael's face, the character's name also connotes a similar disproportionate power relationship in that the name 'Israel' is given to the Biblical figure of Jacob after he wrestles with an angel, a struggle between man and a more powerful supernatural force. Díaz alludes to the Biblical story in Drown by referring multiple times to Ysrael's fascination with the sport of wrestling. The image of Jacob wrestling with the angel also appears in Oscar Wao when Díaz describes the Dominican Republic under Trujillo like 'being at the bottom of the ocean' (2007: 81) and Oscar's mother, Beli, as one who 'struggled Jacob-like against the ocean pressing down on her' (89). The ocean, or the angel, represents the oppressive force of Trujillo's power, and Beli, like Jacob, must struggle against it in order to come up for air. Thus, even the name of the character Ysrael embodies a hierarchical power dynamic like that between the angel and Jacob, the ocean and its floor, or the mask of the First World superpower and the hidden face beneath. 9 A Japanese term referring to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 10 For a discussion of the way in which post-colonial writing attempts to wrest power and authority from the colonial culture, see The Empire Writes Back (1989) by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen. 1989. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, London: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 11 Critical discussion of Díaz's political position on writing has focused primarily on his insertion of Spanish into his English narrative (Dalleo and Machado Sáez 2007 Dalleo, Raphael and Machado Sáez, Elena. 2007. The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [Google Scholar]; Loss 2004 Loss, Jacqueline. 2004. "Junot Díaz (1968–)". In Latino and Latina Writers, Edited by: West-Durán, Alan, Herrera-Sobek, María and Salgado, César A. 803–16. New York: Scribner's. [Google Scholar]; Pérez 2005 Pérez, Rolando. 2005. What is 'Minor' in Latino Literature. Melus, 30(4): 89–108. [Google Scholar]). As many of the Spanish phrases that appear in his writing are Dominican colloquialisms, Díaz's frequent use of Spanish serves to interrupt the official language of the United States and of the text, calling attention to the marginalized Dominican presence within the Anglicized image that the US projects. In an interview from 2000, Díaz Díaz, Junot. 2000. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The New Yorker, December 25 [Google Scholar] stated, 'When I learned English in the States, this was a violent enterprise. And by forcing Spanish back onto English, forcing it to deal with the language it tried to exterminate in me, I've tried to represent a mirror-image of that violence on the page. Call it my revenge on English' (Céspedes and Torres-Saillant 2000 Céspedes, Diogenes and Torres-Saillant, Silvio. 2000. Fiction Is the Poor Man's Cinema: An Interview with Junot Díaz. Callaloo, 23(3): 892–907. [Google Scholar]: 904). The logic with which Díaz explains his use of Spanish is quite similar to his proposal that anti-imperialist writing insert itself into the silences, the páginas en blanco, imposed by the imperial power, and thus, bring the hidden face of modernity into light. However, it is important to note that despite the Spanish language's current existence as a minor language within the United States, Spanish in its official register is, likewise, a colonial language. Díaz's frequent use of Dominican slang, in deliberate counterpoint with official Spanish discourse, is perhaps one way he attempts to avoid the ambiguity that would otherwise arise from inserting one colonial language into another as an act of resistance. His use of slang, both in English and Spanish, reflects a similar logic to his 'forcing' of Spanish onto English, a violent undercutting of official discourse with unofficial, colloquial language. Nevertheless, the writing that Díaz proposes in Oscar Wao goes beyond any discussion of the use of Spanish over English or slang over proper grammar. It is a writing that exposes the tyranny that is present even within its own contestatory manifestation and not simply within the colonial writing into which it is inserted. 12 The superhero writing to which Yunior alludes is not just any type of writing. Throughout his childhood and most of the novel, Oscar composes epic fantasy novels and role-play scripts, yet he does not yet know 'that these half-assed pastiches were to be his Destiny' (Díaz 2007 Díaz, Junot. 2007. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, New York: Riverhead Books. [Google Scholar]: 22). It is not until Oscar begins to use language against the fukú that he arrives at his destiny, or that he transforms into a superhero. Also, although Yunior is the primary narrator of Oscar Wao, Oscar's sister, Lola, narrates Chapter Two as well as the brief introduction to Part Two. Lola's narration focuses on her individual journey, especially regarding her relationship to her mother, and reads like a letter to Yunior that he has incorporated into his narrative. Her writing provides narrative background on Oscar's family, a springboard from which Yunior goes on to discuss the fukú. However, it appears that it is specifically anti-fukú writing that gives the writer the status of a superhero. 13 Superhero comics in the United States have traditionally served as a tool of political propaganda in support of US military operations. The superhero genre in the US arose almost simultaneously with the advent of World War II. While WWII superheroes fought the Axis powers, superheroes from the 1950s and early 1960s would often battle against communists in Korea, Vietnam, and even in Latin America – wherever the US military was engaged at the time. Although many of these traditional characters would later be reinvented to appeal to changing public perception, such as the anti-Vietnam War youth movement, they were originally created to fight villainous adversaries that clearly personified the 'enemies' of the United States government. For an in-depth analysis of comic books in the United States and their relationship to US political history, see Bradford W. Wright's Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (2001). Considering the pro-USA bent of the traditional comic books, the depiction of the superhero in Watchmen as a corruptible figure, who is at times terrifying, is equally a critique of the United States government. Tellingly, some of the most horrifically violent acts committed by the Watchmen occur during their military service in Vietnam. In other words, the fallen superhero embodies an image of the fallen superpower, morally corrupted by its own strength. While Díaz in Oscar Wao aims to use imperial language for his own anti-imperialist purposes, he performs a similar operation with superheroes. Díaz employs a genre that has been used to justify US military domination in order to challenge and undermine imperial power. However, even when used for different ends, the superhero genre, like writing, remains inextricably linked with the superpower. Díaz seeks to expose this interdependent relationship, revealing the reproduction of imperial hierarchy even within his own contestation.