Could it be Fukú?

A driver digs out her car in Portland, Maine.

        Many East Coasters are suffering through the daunting two to three feet of snow that fell in the past few days. In fact, the storm was a result of the collision of two weather systems, affecting more than 40 million people! More than 300,000 people still remain without power, mostly in Massachusetts. Federal aid helped people in local towns of Connecticut after President Obama declared it a State of Emergency. And to think that I thought we got a lot of snow here in Chicago!
         Natural disasters. First Hurricane Sandy, now Snowstorm Nemo. When natural distasters appear such as Sandy and Nemo, now I can not help but think of fukú. Junot Diaz offers a unique way of looking at why events happened in history in his book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. What is fukú? It is a curse. Many families try to stay as far away from it as possible, but sometimes it is inescapable. It was said to be "carried in with the screams of the enslaved" (1). Fukú is also often described as being related to disasters whether privately, locally, or nationally. In the point of view of Yunior, the narrator of Oscar Wao, would people say that is it fukú creating Sandy and Nemo? What have we done to deserve this type of fukú? Could it be as big as destroying our environment one gas tank at a time or as little as disobeying a teacher? Can fukú somehow be related to karma? After all, what goes around comes around.