After some thought and an inspiring talk with our very own Bryan, I have decided to use Junot Díaz's The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) as my primary source. Aside from winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, I think the novel is fantastical, poignant, and the prose is top-notch. Professor Díaz teaches creative writing at MIT and edits the Boston Review.
For some general information on the novel, read the wiki, which is informative and detailed.
A more "academic" review from Salon can be found here. The following is a brief excerpt from Kelts's review:
"The plot interweaves period chapters set in Santo Domingo with those in New Jersey and New York as if hoping to diagnose Oscar’s addiction to love and Yunior’s encroaching self-loathing via personal and political histories. Accounts of betrayals, beatings, tortures and other manifold perversions of humanity darken Dominican narratives filled with beautiful and strong women seeking love, and proud men crushed by their perceived failure to navigate a ruinous social system."
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