Yunior de Las Casas from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoRead about the other entries on the list.
Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is the story of Oscar De León, an overweight, sci-fi loving Dominican kid growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar’s story is narrated by Yunior de las Casas, Oscar’s best friend and the sometime boyfriend to Oscar’s sister Lola. Yunior acts as an omniscient narrator, populating the story with details that he couldn’t have known and admitting that he changed some names between “drafts.” His fabrications may not be strictly real, but they allow Yunior to weave Oscar’s story into the larger narrative of the Dominican Republic.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao appears among Saskia Lacey's fifty incredible literary works destined to become classics, Samantha Mabry's five books that carry curses, Susan Barker's top ten novels with multiple narratives, BBC Culture's twelve greatest novels of the 21st century, Emily Temple's fifty greatest debut novels since 1950, Niall Williams's top ten bookworms' tales, Chrissie Gruebel's nine best last lines in literature, Alexia Nader's nine favorite books about unhappy families, Jami Attenberg's top six books with overweight protagonists, Brooke Hauser's six top books about immigrants, Sara Gruen's six favorite books, Paste magazine's list of the ten best debut novels of the decade (2000-2009), and The Millions' best books of fiction of the millenium. The novel is one of Matthew Kaminski's five favorite novels about immigrants in America and is a book that made a difference to Zoë Saldana.
The Page 99 Test: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
--Marshal Zeringue
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