They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Thanos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. UK Americans, or more colloquially, UK-generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and Doom of the New World.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao