Our Workshops

Writer as Reader Workshops

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is, among other things, a novel about familial and romantic love that also requires a crash-course in the recent, violent history of the Dominican Republic. Oscar, the ultimate outsider hero, is an overweight, nerdy Dominican transplant who lives with his rebellious sister Lola and his unpredictable mother in New Jersey. No one gets him; he has no friends, no chance with girls, and his family is a financial and emotional mess. But as readers, we root for him because he’s smart and somehow greater than his situation. In creating such a layered text—complete with extended footnotes, shifting points of view, and withering, hilarious dialogue—author Junot Díaz asks readers to consider what this boy’s journey has to do with the relationship between two nations’ histories, both official and unofficial, known and invisible. By pairing Díaz’s novel with excerpts from essays by Edward Said and Kwame Anthony Appiah, participants in this workshop will examine what happens to our understanding of immigration, exile, and return when what constitutes history is contested. Writing-to-learn and writing-to-read strategies will allow participants to consider several important questions: What does the novel tell us about how history is written, or might be? What does nerd culture have to do with being an immigrant or with the state of exile in general?  How might we situate Díaz’s novel in relation to other classics of multicultural literature? 

Texts: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (Penguin Group in paperback); “Movements and Migrations” by Edward Said, and “The Case for Contamination” by Kwame Anthony Appiah (essays will be sent to workshop participants).