Cultural Conflict and Historical Background in Junot Diaz's Novel

In Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, we again encounter elements of cultural conflict. Mysticism meets the technological age in the early pages of the novel. According to the narrator, every citizen that has emigrated from the Dominican Republic to the United States is cursed. They are leaving one place of poverty and inequality and entering another: 

“No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of the Europeans on Hispaniola unleased the fuku on the world, and we’ve all been in the shit ever since. Santo Domingo might be the fuku’s Kilometer Zero, its port of entry, but we are all of us its children, whether we know it or not. (2-3) 

These austere conditions were actually the result of cause and effect and political policies. I note that Trujillo, a brutal right-wing dictator, who is mentioned on page 3 of the novel, was covertly supported by the U.S. government. His reign of terror lasted 31 years, from 1930 to 1961 and profoundly impacted the people of Oscar Wao’s generation. The lives of the story’s main characters were embedded in a matrix of poverty, crime, and drug abuse, which could explain Oscar’s retreat into the realm of Genres: science fiction fantasy.