In terms of narrative technique, why did the writer incorporate footnotes, and what are the importance of the footnotes in The Brief Wondrous Life...

Yunio, the narrator of The Brief Wondrous Life
of Oscar Wao, footnotes to establish ethos, or
credibility and trust of the author, and pathos, past "suffering"
of Dominicans.  Because he is an outsider to the de Leon family (and to Trujillo's reign
in the Dominican), Yunior's footnoting establishes him as a scholarly and outspoken
voice.

Such marginalia once seemed bulky or too academic in
texts, but Yunior's use of it is playful.  He uses the second person familiar
"you":

For
those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican
history...

Yunior even drops
the F-bomb on Trujillo, calling him "F**kface."  Though this is anything but scholarly,
it establishes Yunior's voice and Trujillo's character as mythical.  Later, it will
serve to characterize the "fuku," the curse that characterizes the cruel
dictator.

Such footnoting is prevalent in our hypertext
internet culture.  Writing, more and more, has become linked to give it more context.
 Yunior, a product of the digital writing age, uses these footnotes much like a "blog,"
to give historical authenticity and to frame it from his own immigrant voice.  Because
the novel is a mix of Spanish and English, fantasy and reality, novel and comic book,
superhero and villain, the footnotes are a way to blend the actual dictator with his
mythical character in the book and a way to blend Yunior's scholarly voice with his
younger "macho" voice.

Diaz's writing is full of esoteric
science-fiction, comic book, and pop culture footnotes.  In fact, there is a website
devoted to explaining these
references:

http://www.annotated-oscar-wao.com/

The
author Kim says:

readability="13">

I was reading "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
Wao" by Junot Díaz, and it was extremely slow going since I need my laptop nearby the
entire time, with Wikipedia, Google, and Google translate open. This was also annoying
because it meant that I couldn't really read on the subway or elsewhere without an
internet connection, unless I wanted to miss out on half of the
story.

So, the novel is a
kind of archipelago (series of disconnected islands), many voices all conflicted, meant
to confuse us all--black and white, Dominican and American, Spanish-speaker and
English-speaker.  In this chaotic culture, we are all kind of
immigrants.