CARIBBEAN TITANIC AND TYRANNICAL APPETITES: FUKÚ, VORACIOUS NARRATIVES, AND LITERARY BODIES IN JUNOT DÍAZ’S THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
No. 27 (2022-09-01)Author(s)
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Silvia Ortiz GómezUniversidad de los Andes, Colombia
Abstract
The preface for Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Óscar Wao (2007) introduces Galactus, Marvel’s “Devourer of Worlds”, as a disturbing reading clue. His presence encourages this article to read the novel’s colonial, social, and narrative dynamics from the acts of devouring and being devoured; both key to the cannibalistic artistic and historical traditions of the Caribbean. Such narrative appetites will bring forward, and contrast, imaginaries of literary resistance created by Óscar Wao, as well as those of dehumanizing devouring inherited by Colonization, Trujillo’s regime, and the novel’s narrator himself.
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