What I’m Reading: ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’

Last summer I left a small, research-intensive university in the British Midlands and arrived in the United States to take a job at Rutgers University. My preparation for New Jersey culture was, obviously, the television series The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, along with Jersey Shore, which my son encouraged me to savor as a postmodern pleasure.

In literature, Richard Ford’s Independence Day offered what seemed to be a pathway into the New Jersey soul coupled with an elaborate tour of its freeways, while Philip Roth’s American Pastoral provided a rich cultural and ethnic history of the state.

Most transformative, however, was Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Partly set at Rutgers, and interweaving a range of characters and historical periods, the novel gave me an extraordinary frame for understanding a diverse student body. Many Rutgers students’ parents lived through chaotic political struggles before they settled in New Jersey, and had little education beyond high school. The novel provided a striking backdrop for my conversations with those students, who have been relentlessly optimistic and good humored. It helped me understand their hopes that Rutgers will take them beyond where they have been.