Does Your Family History Come with a Legend or a Curse?

The 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” by Junot Diaz, is this year’s common book selection by RIC Open Books – Open Minds (OBOM). Diaz’s debut novel is about the multigenerational “fuku” (curse) under which the main character, Oscar, and his family live.

Building on the novel’s theme, the OBOM Committee has put out a call for written submissions (essays/fiction/nonfiction, a minimum of 500 words in length) or songs, poetry, plays, dance and visual art based on family legends, curses and counter-spells. This creative project may be based on one’s real family or a fictional family. 

Submissions should be sent to obom@ric.edu by Thursday, Oct. 1. The committee encourages submissions from all RIC students, faculty and staff. Projects will be displayed in Alex and Ani Hall on Thursday, Oct. 15. There will also be readings and performances.

In “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” the lead character, Oscar, has a fairly typical life until he reaches puberty and becomes a teenage outcast. Oscar’s mother and sister are also plagued by a series of misfortunes: Oscar’s mother, a former beauty, has been ravaged by illness and bad love affairs; and his sister Lola, another intense beauty, has been cursed with her mother's poor taste in men. Woven within the family stories are the political, economic and psychological forces that have brought so many Dominican immigrants to the United States.

The purpose of the Open Books – Open Minds program is to provide a common intellectual community in which RIC faculty, students and staff all read from a common text and explore one of the text’s themes throughout the year. “Whether you are a first-year student or an upper-level student, ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ may be on your course syllabus this year,” said Zubeda Jalalzai, RIC professor of English and OBOM committee member.

Activities around a common book “show learning in action,” Jalalzai said. “Students come to see that books are not only read to fulfill an assignment or to entertain but are really important in developing their thoughts about the world.”

After common book suggestions are submitted to the OBOM Committee in the spring, the committee amasses titles, creates a short list, posts the list on the web and encourages the campus community to read the books over the summer and to provide feedback. Depending on the responses, the committee selects the top three books and posts them for a campus-wide vote. In the summer, the group holds a teaching roundtable, where RIC professors come together to talk about how to use the common book in their classrooms. Throughout the year, students, faculty and staff are engaged in interdisciplinary conversations around the book.

“An English student may talk to a psychology student about the common book or stop to talk to the president or vice president of the college,” said Jalalzai. “The common book brings students into conversations with people who might not be as available to them. And data has shown that a common book helps with retention by fortifying connections to one’s college.”

Later in the academic year, OBOM programming around Diaz’s novel will include a film screening of “In the Time of the Butterflies,” based on a novel of the same name by Dominican American author Julia Alvarez. A lecture is also being planned about the history of the Dominican Republic. The year ends with a spring student conference where papers and proposals will be presented to the campus community that encapsulates common-book projects, in-class discussions and programming outside of class.