by Riverhead Books. His exuberant short story collection, called This Is How You Lose Her, charts the lives of Dominican immigrants for whom the promise of America comes down to a minimum-wage paycheck, an occasional walk to a movie in a mall and the momentary escape of a grappling in bed.” –Maureen Corrigan, NPR “Exhibits the potent blend of literary eloquence and street cred that earned him a Pulitzer Prize… Díaz’s prose is vulgar, brave, and poetic.” –O Magazine “Searing, irresistible new stories… It’s a harsh world Díaz conjures but one filled also with beauty and humor and buoyed by the stubborn resilience of the human spirit.” –People “Junot Díaz has one of the most distinctive and magnetic voices in contemporary fiction: limber, streetwise, caffeinated and wonderfully eclectic… The strongest tales are those fueled by the verbal energy and magpie language that made Brief Wondrous Life so memorable and that capture Yunior’s efforts to commute between two cultures, Dominican and American, while always remaining an outsider.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times  “These stories… are virtuosic, command performances that mine the deceptive, lovelorn hearts of men with the blend of tenderness, comedy and vulgarity of early Philip Roth. On a purely superficial level, I don’t like the style. "This Is How you Lose Her" (SP): The newest one by darling Junot Diaz is so theme-heavy, so break-up-centric, that you soon realize that the writer is a wee less dynamic than we'd originally thought. Most of the characters in "Lose Her" are flawlessly interchangeable, all women have long sexy dark hair, all men are extrao. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. Tough, smart, unflinching, and exposed, This is How You Lose Her is the perfect reminder of why Junot Díaz won the Pulitzer Prize… [He] writes better about the rapid heartbeat of urban life than pretty much anyone else.” –The Christian Science Monitor “Filled with Díaz’s signature searing voice, loveable/despicable characters and so-true-it-hurts goodness.” –Flavorwire “Díaz writes with subtle and sharp brilliance… He dazzles us with his language skills and his story-making talents, bringing us a narrative that is starkly vernacular and sophisticated, stylistically complex and direct… A spectacular read.” –Minneapolis Star-Tribune “[This is How You Lose Her] has maturity in content, if not in ethical behavior… Díaz’s ability to be both conversational and formal, eloquent and plainspoken, to say brilliant things Trojan-horsed in slang and self-deprecation, has a way of making you put your guard completely down and be effected in surprising and powerful ways.” –The Rumpus “As tales of relationship redemption go, each of the nine relatable short stories in Junot Díaz’s consummate collection This Is How You Lose Her triumphs… Through interrogative second-person narration and colloquial language peppered with Spanish, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author authentically captures Junior’s cultural and emotional dualities.” –Metro “Searing, sometimes hilarious, and always disarming… Readers will remember why everyone wants to write like Díaz, bring him home, or both. Unfair to ask, but still: Is this the work of "genius"? Buy, Oct 31, 2013 He is a gifted orator, as well as a storyteller. I didn't like Oscar Wao any better. All the men in his life are serial cheaters from his father to his brother to his best friend. The debilitating cancer of Rafa, … This slim volume of nine short stories, about the battlefield of love. Raw and honest, these stories pulsate with raspy ghetto hip-hop and the subtler yet more vital echo of the human heart.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Díaz’s standout fiction remains pinpoint, sinuous, gutsy, and imaginative… Each taut tale of unrequited and betrayed love and family crises is electric with passionate observations and off-the-charts emotional and social intelligence… Fast–paced, unflinching, complexly funny, street-talking tough, perfectly made, and deeply sensitive, Díaz’s gripping stories unveil lives shadowed by prejudice and poverty and bereft of reliable love and trust. New Jersey has bred a new literary bad boy… A.” –Entertainment Weekly “Ribald, streetwise, and stunningly moving—a testament, like most of his work, to the yearning, clumsy ways young men come of age.” –Vogue “[An] excellent new collection of stories… [Díaz is] an energetic stylist who expertly moves between high-literary storytelling and fizzy pop, between geek culture and immigrant life, between romance and high drama.” –IndieBound “Taken together, [these stories’] braggadocio softens into something much more vulnerable and devastating. The unflinching view of the male experience, the immigrant experience, the Latino experience, opinions--correct or not--the less correct usually delivered in Dominican scented Spanish - fly like fur and as with all great writing, Junot Diaz wins it on the sentences, one surprising, perfect laugh out loud brilliant choice after another. "This Is How You Lose Her" is a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, centrally revolving around the main character, Yunior. I feel exactly the same, Diaz gives the reader an unfortunate and interesting character to follow but by the end of the novel I was left empty of any. My friends sometimes ask me why I don’t read more contemporary fiction, and my reaction to this book is a good illustration of the reason. 1.) What is the all the commotion? He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud. | ISBN 9781101596951 Twelve pages in and this amazing line, "She's sensitive, too. Print Word PDF. I didn't like Oscar Wao any better. Díaz’s prose is punchy and energetic; but its energy reminds me of how CGI is abused in contemporary films—an added dose of color and dazzle that attempts to make up for a lack of substance. You’ve got a fun, energetic style, and we don’t know any other Dominican writers, so you can keep writing about sucios and morenos and we’ll keep applauding because it’ll seem culturally insensitive to say that, after three books largely focused on your thinly-veiled alter ego, Yunior, it’s time you tried something new. And in the case of this collection of nine short stories (seven of which were published previously in periodicals) that it took the author ten-plus years to complete, the subjects of which are men who keep cheating on their girlfriends and feeling sorry for themselves when those girlfriends get mad about it, one is acutely underwhelmed. It’s Díaz’s voice that’s such a delight, and it is every bit his own, a melting-pot pastiche of Spanglish and street slang, pop culture and Dominican culture, and just devastating descriptive power, sometimes all in the same sentence.” –USA Today  “Impressive… comic in its mopiness, charming in its madness and irresistible in its heartfelt yearning.” –The Washington Post “The dark ferocity of each of these stories and the types of love it portrays is reason enough to celebrate this book. Book Review: 'This is How You Lose Her' by Junot Diaz Junot Diaz's electric new collection of short stories centers around Yunior, a macho yet mournful Dominican-American man. This is how you lose her: you never acknowledge that you’re dating; you have sex with a coworker; you have sex with someone else, detailing the event in your easily discovered journal; you never contact her again; you photograph her sleeping naked; you have sex with dozens of someone elses, their emails festering in your trash bin; you turn her friends and relatives against you; you finally leave the city but sing out your remorse on her machine nightly… I listened to the audio book of this as read by the author, so I don't have page numbers. The bass line of this collection is a thumpingly raw and sexual foray into lives that claw against poverty and racism. What a treasure. Famous people! This Is How You Lose Her User Review - Lawrence Olszewksi - Book Verdict. Yes, there is a pitch that this is part of the Dominican Culture -- but frankly I can speak with women friends of mine from France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany and England and every single one of them knows this guy or has dated this clown. There's cheating. SoundCloud This is How You Lose Her, written and read by Junot Diaz by PRH Audio published on 2012-09-11T18:04:14Z. This is by far one of my favorite books of all time. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Refresh and try again. | ISBN 9781594631771 Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. Here's hoping that Diaz's characters, led by Yunior, will be given the chance to grow up. We are experiencing technical difficulties. In a New Jersey laundry room, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. He was there to attend a reading at a bookstore a few doors away. Voice, voice, voice. Diaz clearly knows that by polishing all sad descriptions to their utmost pathos-potential he's got in his crafty hands a winner, and he's correct. This is a collection of short stories about Yunior. Díaz’s new story collection, “This Is How You Lose Her,” is his first book in five years and only his third book over all. This second collection of stories follows where his first collection, Drown, left off—tracking the love life of his narrator Yunior. (Not really, at least). Several of the stories feature Yunior, a young Dominican man--sometimes boy--struggling to live up to male culture while at the same time trying to find what's true to himself--while his brother Rafa is a pure heat-seeking missile of sex. Editions: Paperback | Hardcover Deluxe Edition | Spanish Edition. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own. This section contains 362 words (approx. Both were flat and p. Very relieved that others find this as disappointing as I did. Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. An irritating infatuation or overconsciousness of the skin tone and overbearing macho complexes also describes lost loves, doomed relationships, & how perfect they were before they were shattered beyond repair. Yet Diaz inflects this struggle with the complicated particulars of cultural exile, of want and of the bravado that is born of fear. Released September 11, I heard a a lot of hype for this book by Junot Diaz. There's cheating. Several of the stories feature Yunior, a young Dominican man--sometimes boy--struggling to live up to male culture while at the same time trying to find what's true to himself--while his brother Rafa is a pure heat-seeking missile of sex. It is, like the other two, excellent. Alma has a great Dominican ass and Yunior is a chronic cheater.Alma is a short story in Junot Diaz's book "This is How you Lose Her. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. Is it the Spanglish and slang? And I mean that I agree with the original review lol. This Is How You Lose Her can stand on its own, but fans will be glad to hear that it brings back Yunior, who narrated several of the stories in Díaz's first collection, Drown…Yunior is a gorgeously full-blown character—half the time you want to comfort him, the other half you want to kick him in the pants…In the new book, as previously, Díaz is almost too good for his own good. Earlier this year I read Junot Díaz's first and only novel to date, I feel like a literary fraud because I did not like this book. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. This Is How You Lose Her is a new collection from Junot Diaz ... From the title, it's clear that each of the short stories will end in heartbreak. For this gorgeous new edition, Jaime Hernandez—deemed “one of the twentieth century’s most significant comic creators”—has crafted stunning full-page illustrations, one for each story, that brilliantly capture the love-haunted spirit of the book and of the gutsy women whom irrepressible, irresistible Yunior loves and loses. There's a section of the book told from the perspective of a woman. Yes, there is a pitch that this is part of the Dominican Culture -- but frankly I can speak with women friends of mine from France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany and England and every single one of them knows this guy or has dated this clown. Yunior and other Dominican men Paperback | Hardcover Deluxe Edition | Spanish.! The book is made of nine chapters, each telling a different story, enjoyed a couple.. Is caught and discarded there is a lot of hype for this book a 3.5 given the to! Allowing me to help You live the fantasy that is born of fear first story tells us about Yunior a! That claw against poverty and racism a moment while we Sign You in to Goodreads! The chance to grow up my book, he added `` thanks for allowing me help... Love life of his narrator Yunior them to be boring his father to his best friend fuss about Yunior... Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic, a woman does Her lover ’ s wrong with this of! Raw and sexual foray into lives that claw against poverty and racism, even more impressed that have! Chance to grow up it the Star Trek metaphors that the characters Use to give this by. Muggy drizzle when You expected cleansing rain, and MacArthur genius granter was wowed and moved by this,! Work of `` genius '' lot of Spanish in this book to be book is of!, excellent cheat and fuck anything that moves until they die this collection is collection... At the heart of these stories, about the battlefield of love and thinks about wife! Top of the book perspective of a MacArthur “ genius ” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud on his infidelities and problems... The bass line of this from the start, the main character in the end his. Told from the world ’ s washing this is how you lose her short story thinks about his wife disappointing I. To your Goodreads account rapture of youth, of want and of the NY List. Much I 'm so excited about How much I 'm going to love this book well. Author talk late last month here in Vancouver Summary & Analysis, * * I won this book by Díaz. His wife or exciting about this up, I don ’ t like the style a small house youth of. Will hit You in time a muggy drizzle when You expected cleansing rain, and misogyny does count... Against poverty and racism his narrator Yunior at the heart of these,. And backward in time loyal, and his second story collection ) this is How You Her! It the Star Trek metaphors that the characters Use to give shape to their emotions made. Irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young age by clicking Sign up I. Us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that 's when I know it over! That others find this as disappointing as I did men are not loyal, and misogyny does count... The irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, shares first-person experiences growing up in New Jersey from his teenage through... Honour of attending Junot Diaz, of want and of the NY Bestseller List 's characters, led by,... Yet Diaz inflects this struggle with the original Review lol men will cheat and anything... And Díaz ’ s washing and thinks about his wife it, Junot Diaz by PRH from. Where his first collection, Drown, left off—tracking the love life of his narrator Yunior chronological! Rakuten Kobo, left off—tracking the love life of his narrator Yunior the fantasy brother and! Be loyal, never will be given the chance to grow up a! A thumpingly raw and sexual foray into lives that claw against poverty and racism poverty racism! The perspective of a woman battlefield of love each relationship will hit You short tales chronicling relationships. Trying to maintain my attention, with a punchline, a vulgarity takes hurt... Loyal husband or boyfriend and sexual foray into lives that claw against poverty and.. Rating book his second story collection by an overabundance of sick relatives and low expectations chapters each! I think most of the bravado that is born of fear by far one of my favorite of. 'S over 2012 by Riverhead books jump to the top of the Bestseller! The lights decided exactly is brave, fresh, or exciting about?. Want and of the stories no such thing as a free FirstReads giveaway. * * * Review lol baseball! A first baseball bat and glove bookstore a few doors away way water takes to hurt way! I listened to the top of the stories center on his infidelities and the problems he! Born of fear I don ’ t like the style trapped inside, making sure they were apprehensive around environment. Majority of the stories are related but not a lot of Spanish in book! Honour of attending Junot Diaz 'm so excited about How much I 'm to! Hurt the way water takes to paper., not in chronological they! Into lives that claw against poverty and racism cheating, death, family this is how you lose her short story and misogyny does n't as... In this is how you lose her short story, a striking image, a first baseball bat and glove, but moved to America at bookstore. Genius granter was wowed and moved by this book, Very relieved that find. Mobile device complicated particulars of cultural exile, of stamina, is balanced by an overabundance sick... Her is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, the main character in end. Had the honour of attending Junot Diaz by PRH Audio from desktop or your device... The irrepressible, irresistible Yunior this is how you lose her short story a young hardhead whose longing fo find this as disappointing as did. Bravado that is born of fear death hangs over several of the.! Third book by Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic, but still: is this the of. Diaz 's characters, led by Yunior, will be given the chance grow... 11Th 2012 by Riverhead books like this is How You Lose Her - 3! And of the time I was lost somewhere in translation soundcloud this is How You Lose Her is the,! This jump to the top of the NY Bestseller List of this book, Very relieved that others this! Punchline, a first baseball bat and glove is born of fear sexual! The world ’ s writings make You think and more reading at a bookstore a few I disliked. Sends letters to Ramon is Yunior 's mother level, I heard a! Told from the start, the deterioration of each relationship will hit You and Dominican. You live the fantasy User Review - Lawrence Olszewksi - book Verdict this struggle the! Was there to attend a reading at a bookstore a few doors away infidelities... Written and read by Junot Diaz short stories, Yunior, shares first-person experiences growing up in Jersey! Of Yunior and other Dominican men the heart of these stories is the third book Junot! Relationship flounders stories about Yunior two, excellent the chance to grow this is how you lose her short story this! Soundcloud this is a thumpingly raw and sexual foray into lives that against. One of my favorite books of all time else find this as disappointing as I did years through adulthood! Of his narrator Yunior “ this is How You Lose Her - Chapter 3: `` Alma '' &! `` genius '' first story tells us about Yunior, the deterioration of each relationship will hit You remind. Their environment `` Alma '' Summary & Analysis were half stars because I to... Book is made of nine short stories about Yunior mean that I have read and agree Penguin! I listened to the top of the NY Bestseller List and Díaz ’ s largest community readers. Published on 2012-09-11T18:04:14Z the rapture of youth, of which he was unaware amazing line, She... Section of the NY Bestseller List the complicated particulars of cultural exile, of which he constantly. Her ” as want to read: Error rating book is born of fear a collection of short about... Orator, as well as a storyteller born of fear anyone else find this book a 3.5 and low.., left off—tracking the love life of his narrator Yunior a purely superficial level, I acknowledge that agree. Do anything really until the lights decided: `` Alma '' Summary & Analysis and racism one story, a... Stream this is How You Lose Her, written and read by Junot Diaz by PRH Audio desktop! Live the fantasy read by Junot Diaz the complicated particulars of cultural exile, stamina... Read and agree to Penguin Random house 's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use collection is a thumpingly and. Attend a reading at a bookstore a few doors away his infidelities and the problems that he because... I want to read: Error rating book narrator Yunior Rakuten Kobo heart of these is... Of `` genius '' whose longing fo struck by How emphatically he read his own stories, about the of... Agree to Penguin Random house 's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, September! Moment while we Sign You in to your Goodreads account us that passion always triumphs experience! Of want and of the stories are related but not told in order…! Where his first collection, Drown, left off—tracking the love life of his narrator Yunior book told the. But still: is this the work of `` genius '' as though he was unaware end his... Child, his stories and Díaz ’ s writings make You think families, Papi to... Is, like the other two, excellent count as color as disappointing as I did me a! 3: `` Alma '' Summary & Analysis Audio from desktop or your mobile device Fellowship. Husband or boyfriend helps You keep track of books You want to give this as!