This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz’s recurring protagonist Yunior, a young Dominican-American man reappears in his series of nine short-stories in This Is How You Lose Her. Díaz puts Yunior through every obstacle love has to offer, from the experience of family love, devestating heartbreak and cheating. Overall infidelity is the reigning theme in This Is How You Lose Her, which Díaz describes as:
“A tale about a young man’s struggle to overcome his cultural training and inner habits in order to create lasting relationships… [By the end of the book,] he finally begins to see the women in his life as fully human. He finally gains, after much suffering, a true human imaginary. Something that for the average guy is very difficult to obtain, considering that most of us are socialized to never imagine women as fully human.”
Described by the New York Times, as “too good to be true” Díaz’s prose is tender, comical, emotive and explicit. Díaz doesn’t find the need to use flowery words to write pretty things. This Is How You Lose Her is a subtle, energetic exploration between gender and romance in relation to his culture as a Latino writer.
This Is How You Lose Her proves that he is one of the most natural writers in modern literature.
Read excerpts from the book here!
