Abstract
Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a novel that, like its protagonist, Oscar, is in love with Genres!. Through allusion to intermedial speculative genres, Oscar Wao exploits the unreality to critique the extremity of American imperialism and neocolonial conditions within the Dominican Republic. The millennial proliferation of Latin American apocalyptic and dystopian fictions serves as a barometer of the mounting contradictions of the neoliberal regime of capitalism and the socio-ecological violence unleashed by structural adjustment and resource extractivism throughout the Americas. Diaz's semi-peripheral position as an immigrant writer bestows a bifurcated vision that is world-systemic in its condition of possibility. Oscar's interest in the fantastic shifts from the egoistic to the archaeological: a desire for revelation rather than gratification. For Oscar himself, genre fiction serves no function in representing his reality; it is escape rather than mimesis.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
