Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Oscar Wao Goes to Spain
June 7, 2008

While Junot Diaz may be a big name in the States and in Latin America, Spain is still warming up to this year's Pulitzer Prize winning author. On June 6^th Spain’s Random House Mondadori realesed Achy Obejas’ Spanish-language translation of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The U.S. Vintage edition will be released in September. And luckily this time around, the translated title is sticking to its English-language original: La maravillosa vida breve de Óscar Wao. As it should be. Not like Spain’s bizarre take on Díaz’s Drown into Los boys when it was published in 1996. I just can’t help but think of Kiefer Sutherland with fangs in The Lost Boys.


In any case, from what Babelia had to say, I think this is the beginning of a wonderful new friendship between Spanish readers and the Dominican boy from New Jersey. You have to keep in mind that Spanglish is still something foreign to those living outside the Americas and in the article journalist Nuria Barrios focuses on explaining Díaz’ bilingually acrobatic writing style. Here's my translation:

Language is without a doubt, Junot Díaz ’s most powerful tool. It’s not merely the language of a Hispanic author who writes in English, occasionally inserting words and expressions in Spanish. It’s much more: It’s a new language that expresses a new way of life. If the United States is the ground zero for the battle between English and Spanish, Junot Díaz opens a window for those unfamiliar with this confrontation, where Anglo Saxons and Hispanics have created something alive and different.

Entitled, “A New Language,” Barrios started the piece talking about that now legendary night when Díaz was partying in Mexico City and made his friends laugh when he purposefully pronounced Oscar Wilde’s last name in Spanish as Wao---the way a Spanish speaker might enunciate Wilde, like “with a potato in their mouth” as goes the Spanish saying. That’s when he dropped the novel he was working on and started to write Oscar’s tale. Wow.  Prounounced “gwow” by my relatives.   

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on June 7, 2008 | Comments (0)