2009 Reading Project

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Díaz

Since its inception in 2002, The Tulane Reading Project has created a shared intellectual experience for the entering first-year class through the reading and discussion of a selected book. With a variety of events scheduled throughout the fall semester, the Reading Project creates a campus-wide dialogue on a variety of themes. 

This year's book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2008, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for best novel of 2007. It chronicles the painfully awkward adolescence of an overweight Dominican-American teenager, a hopeless romantic who nurses his frequently broken heart with heavy doses of sci-fi and fantasy. Stuck between two cultures—and saddled with a nasty family curse—Oscar struggles to find his place in the world, with results alternately humorous and heartbreaking.

In his New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani wrote that The Brief Wondrous Life is "so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets 'Star Trek' meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West."

Click below to read recent New Wave articles about the Reading Project:

Students Join Cross Country Book Club

Oscar Wao Breaks the Silence

Junot Díaz Writes What He Knows