You Lose!

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Not until a decade later did he finish his next work, the acclaimed novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , which recounts in ecstatic prose the tragedies that befall a first generation Dominican American family. With this collection of stories, Diaz continues to explore his trademark themes of hardship, loss, failure, and resilience in the lives of Dominican American characters. Each of the stories focuses on individuals confronting tough times and the consequences of their choices, especially in regards to love and relationships.

The central figure and narrator for several of the pieces is the incomparable Yunior.

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His voice ranks among the most distinctive and inimitable in modern literature. Through his perspective, Diaz gives us an uncensored glimpse into the lives of a community of men and women battling through the riotous terrain of love from both the emotional and carnal side. Diaz does not hold back with his oftentimes salacious details of love.

He navigates the perils of sex and relationships with complete honesty and openness. He is a genius of language, most notably with the peerless voice of Yunior. His prose is like wildfire, tearing through everything and leaving you unsettled. We can only hope Diaz continues to produce work in the decades ahead that resonates with the same uproarious energy for life as he does in This Is How You Lose Her. I can hardly wait for his next work. Sep 16, David Dacosta rated it liked it. Junot Diaz has come full circle and returned to his writing roots. The unapologetic use of the word nigger and the raw sexual references that Diaz has become known for are also back for a second occasion.

Short story collections are usually hit and miss.

This Is How follows this pattern. The book begins with the story The Sun, the Moon, the Stars, a tale of infidelity and karmic justice. The relationship between Yunior and Magda subsequently takes a turn for the worse after this revelation. Alma ends almost as soon as in begins. Here we are given a clear glimpse into their family dynamics.

And despite the fact that This Is How It certainly deserves credit for its unique construction. His absolute disregard for the notion of offensive content is refreshing. View all 11 comments. Dec 02, Kemper rated it really liked it Shelves: Junot Diaz brings back Yunior from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as the narrator for most of the stories but leaves out the Dominican history and the geek references. Instead we get to read about heartbreak, infidelity, remorse, alienation and cancer. You know, the stuff that makes life worth living. Taken as a whole, these powerful stories give us a history for Yunior as he grows up in Jersey as a Dominican immigrant dealing with his family and his tendency to cheat on the women in his li Junot Diaz brings back Yunior from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as the narrator for most of the stories but leaves out the Dominican history and the geek references.

Taken as a whole, these powerful stories give us a history for Yunior as he grows up in Jersey as a Dominican immigrant dealing with his family and his tendency to cheat on the women in his life until one betrayal too many sends him into a downward spiral that seemingly lasts for years. The odd thing here is that I never felt that depressed or sad while reading. He does, and he does it often. View all 5 comments. Jul 29, Nat rated it it was ok Shelves: The author specializes in making his short stories fly by.

However, I had a hard time reading most of these tales of cheating and feeling literally zero remorse for it And even going so far as to say that "it was just a mistake. Source Side note on the above song: It's been on repeat for days now. Circling back to the actual story collection: While the first handful of stories were capturing and different enough to keep me interested, once the narrator became the same one for each coming tale I grew quite over it.

Following Yunior from a teen to adulthood didn't end up working in my favour, since his character wasn't that intriguing to see developed over the course of a number of stories. And neither his family nor his romantic partners kept me intrigued enough, so I was disappointed with the second half of this collection.

Mainly because the short stories left me extremely underwhelmed with the characters as a whole. So only time will tell on this one. I'm an Amazon Affiliate. I'll make a small commission! Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat bookspoils with http: Nov 07, Rowena rated it it was amazing Shelves: I had the honour of attending Junot Diaz's author talk late last month here in Vancouver. I was honestly struck by how emphatically he read his own stories, even more impressed that I remembered his cadences.

He is a gifted orator, as well as a storyteller. As mentioned, this is a collection of short stories. They all feature a young Dominican-American man named Yunior, t I had the honour of attending Junot Diaz's author talk late last month here in Vancouver. They all feature a young Dominican-American man named Yunior, the narrative persona Diaz uses in most of his work. The main motif of the stories is cheating. Other themes include immigration keeping families apart, patriarchy, racism and colourism. Why I love this book is that Diaz incorporates so many different style of language in it.

In the same paragraph he may use "street-slang", Spanish expressions, as well as erudite expressions. The way he organizes it is witty and very timely; I burst out laughing more than once while reading the stories. Why I admire Diaz so much as an author is his need to challenge simplistic knowledge in his books. He says he's obsessed his word choice with patriarchy and by how masculinity interacts in society.

His stories also contain colourism issues and during his talk he talked about the prevalence of skin bleaching, what he believed was a result of the power of eurocentrism and was something we despise talking about. In his own words, it's more hidden that Sauron and Voldermot! If I can figure out how to add photos to my review, I will. View all 9 comments. Sep 28, Kellie Lambert rated it liked it. Released September 11, I heard a a lot of hype for this book by Junot Diaz.

I wanted to see--what is all the fuss about? Why did this jump to the top of the NY Bestseller List? I think I can tell you. In my best bookish librarian voice: It shifts between several different love stories, some unrequited, some failed I felt as if the narrator was sitting with me on the stoop of some NY slum, telling me about this girlfriend.

Or this story that just happened last week at schoolor how their heart is broken. The narrators confide in you, shock you, and involve you in each of their stories.

It's a close-up look at Dominican life in New York, and some of the stories were heart-wrenching. The relationships, poverty, the racism--but it didn't address these topics in a high school-history class kinda way. Was this the best book I've read this year? Was it fantastic writing, choice prose? Could I recommend it to everyone? Sexual content and language make this a very gritty story--I found it to be compelling and eye-opening, but it's not for your conservative book club.

I looked up a review when I finished because I was a bit puzzled as to what my take-away was love is depressing? Take a peek at it if you want some crafty, real writing that makes you say, How did Diaz make me feel like I was in the room with him? Can I write characters that real? View all 4 comments. Jun 21, Paul Bryant rated it really liked it Shelves: He takes forever on his stuff.

He keens over every word, and the words are good. I dock a star for three reasons. I found a quote from Diaz: The question was always, for someone like me: What is the role of a male artist in the feminist struggle? Our privilege prevents us. We can be feminist-aligned in some way. And so the women kept saying to us dudes, the best thing you can do is draw maps of masculine privilege.

Draw maps so when we drop the bombs, they land accurate. So, you can see these stories as accurate maps for the feminists, but cher professor, do they need any more maps?? On the other hand, you have to write what you know. Second, and this is just me the Anglo Monolingual Saxon speaking, I found the many sentences like this a bit questionable — Dude was figureando hard.

Had always been a papi chulo, so of course he dove right back into the grip of his old sucias. In her mind a woman with no child could only be explained by vast untrammelled calamity.

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Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. Or, describing a depression Like someone flew a plane into your soul. In this collection, JD gives us close-up focus on Yunior his alter ego , his ma, his pa, his doomed brother Rafa, and their many girlfriends; the area of investigation is male sexuality, sub-category heterosexual, sub-sub category, Dominican, sub-sub-sub category American-Dominican. Well, it's not an autobiography. So many for so long? And yet she went to Harvard?

If so, what does that say for the rest of us? Mar 21, Karel rated it it was ok Shelves: I can praise this. I can even say that it shows you a more accurate representation of what love is than a hell lot of books out there. Yunior, so funny and eloquent in Oscar Wao, is only amusing at best here. From start to end, it's just an unemotional, cold, and distant narration of who he fucked and who he cheated on and what he did to win them back - only to lapse back into the habit like gamblers and alcoholics. There might be something profound here, about life and loss and all the other rot, but I'm afraid the message was not received.

I am not touched. I am not brooding. I do not feel different. The one message that the book tried to hand me was completely redundant. Don't cheat, it says. It will fuck up your life. Sep 11, Maria rated it it was amazing Shelves: Junot Diaz has always been a favorite author of mine, ever since college when he came to the Latin-American lit class I was taking in ' By that time, I had already read Drown and was on my way to reading Negocios, the Spanish translation of Drown, expertly done by my lit. Eduardo Lago even the colloquialisms and the SHUCO-ness , the grit, the sarcasm, the naughtiness, came through, which I know, as an amateur translator myself, is supremely tough to accomplish.

Diaz's language, Junot Diaz has always been a favorite author of mine, ever since college when he came to the Latin-American lit class I was taking in ' Diaz's language, dialogue, place, every ounce of passion and work he puts into his writing, it is all fresh, and so it will be when I reread This Is How You Lose Her next year, and the next, and so on. It takes a very talented writer to give his readers a different glimpse of the same character, Yunior, who pops up everywhere, starting with Drown.

Every time he shows up, a layer of Yunior is peeled back. He's an onion - everytime you peel back a layer, you feel like crying a little. Notice here that Yunior's girls - his sucias - and his friends revolve around him, but the family stays the same, close to him, living in the back of his head - dando consejos giving advice , for better or for worse, and sometimes ruling him.

The mark of a great author is the characters he crafts, and Diaz is a writer who blows the best of them out of the water on that count. Diaz has an amazing ability to evoke emotion like few others can - you pull for Yunior and his boys. You pray for Rafa yet, like Mami, are almost constantly disgusted with him at the same time - so you say your prayer for him then hold up your hand like you are going to smack him silly.

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You want to hug Yunior's girls, tell them you've been there, hold their hands, tell them that even the smartest women can be easily fooled by a charming man. And Papi, it's like Yunior said in Fiesta, a story in Drown - you just look at his belly button because you're afraid of looking him in the eye.

You know you could never live the way some of those characters live or in the places they live, yet people stronger than you do that every day. When you have hope and faith, so do they. There is a common thread that you don't know about or even willfully ignore until you read Diaz's work. You want to hug him.

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You see through the exterior and you want to tell him it's all OK. You want to yell at him and knock some sense into him. Yet you empathize with him. You throw up your hands because you wish he'd just come clean. And you want to be there when he does. And then the sadness when the book ends, even though you know you'll see it again, is palpable. The ripped-out pages I saved in a portfolio just in case I never saw those stories published again. But even though those magazine pages, for the most part, contain the same words as the corresponding stories in the book, it's like the stories were brand new.

Again, blows everyone away on sheer ability. And Diaz, you want to tell him, "You did good, hombre. You did real good. Mar 30, Jessica rated it it was amazing Shelves: Holy cannoli on a flying Popsicle stick. I never got around to reading Oscar Wao mostly because I never got around to it and a little because I was concerned that I simply wouldn't be able to relate to a story about a nerdy teenage boy living in what Diaz himself describes as the ghetto.

But, I heard that it was good you know, in that Pulitzer-winning way and then there was increased buzz around this latest collection of short stories. Somehow, I was the first person on the library reserve lis Holy cannoli on a flying Popsicle stick. Somehow, I was the first person on the library reserve list. I can't believe I'd ever hesitate on something like this - I flipping tore through this thing like my life depended on it.

I didn't even notice that I accidentally doubled the length of my lunch break because of it.

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A series of short stories centered on the theme of lost love, This is How You Lose Her packs an enormous punch. Many stories involve Yunior, who also appeared in Diaz's previous works, but some focus on new characters as well. Those latter stories falter a little bit for me, but that's mostly because Yunior's felt so much like Diaz opening his veins and pouring his blood out onto the pages. The story featuring the titular line is four pages long and features no real action, but it was chilling in its emotion.

I couldn't shake the fact that it was simply the author expressing his regret over a relationship he fucked up once upon a time. So much regret in these pages, and so much heart. Some of the characters lack the self-awareness I'd love to see, but I suppose that drives home the authenticity of the narrative. After all, who's really self-aware when they're struggling to hold together a failing relationship? Regardless of the severity, loss and heartbreak are, sadly, two of the world's few truly universal experiences.

Junot Diaz absolutely nails it.

Maybe it speaks to where I am in my life at the moment, but I am baffled at the idea that anyone can read this book and not feel something. This collection gets my most enthusiastic recommendation. Jun 29, Saffron rated it liked it. This book is not for everyone. The protagonist of the book is not a very easy guy to like.

He is a serial cheater.

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And this book is a snapshot of times he spent with different women. I read it all in one sitting because, strangely I felt attached to the guy right from page one. I knew he was flawed and things he did were not the things any woman can forgive easily. But I think all he needed was love. The writing is rich in certain places but so subtle in others that as a reader you c 3. The writing is rich in certain places but so subtle in others that as a reader you can't not think about it after you have finished the book. I can only wish every book I come across is like that.

Although at the same time I was left confused by the abrupt ending of some chapters. Anyway, I am glad I read this. I loved the protagonist's character. He was the hero and the villain of his own story. Like we usually are in our own lives. Jan 08, Roy Lotz rated it liked it Shelves: I felt as though he was constantly trying to maintain my attention, with a punchline, a striking image, a vulgarity, rather than trusting in the patience of the reader.

The theme of this short-story collection is masculine infidelity. The protagonist of all the stories but one, Yunior, is along with his brother and father a serial philanderer. Though Yunior has his share of longing and vulnerability, the main reason for his cheating seems to be cultural training.

In any case, this understandably gets him into trouble and makes him miserable, as he undermines his every relationship. I admit that the struggles of a young man to stop making obviously bad decisions that hurt people did not strike a chord in me. This was especially true since he does not spend much time in contemplating how it must feel from the other side of infidelity.

And though he does appear to show some signs of growth by the final story, this growth is notably not any substantial increase in empathy. In any case, I found the exposition monotonous and predictable: Two stories stand out as exceptions. These stories aside, I admit that I did not sympathize with Yunior and his obsessive focus on relationships—past and current, failed and failing. But I did finish this book very quickly, reading most of it in one setting, which means it cannot be all bad.

Indeed, it can be very entertaining—like verbal CGI. View all 13 comments. Oct 08, Arria rated it really liked it. I'm a big fan of Junot. I own all 3 of his books and love when he has a story featured in The New Yorker which is how I discovered him, many moons ago, in high school. Diaz has a way with words, that much is certain. Each story has it's own little gem and specialness to it.

This book is comprised of 9 short stories, most of them intertwined, linking the main character, Yunior, with his dealings with women, his dickhead brother, Rafa, who is arrogan I'm a big fan of Junot. This book is comprised of 9 short stories, most of them intertwined, linking the main character, Yunior, with his dealings with women, his dickhead brother, Rafa, who is arrogant and cancer-stricken; their mother, who has the patience of a saint dealing with his Rafa, and there is a bit of a theme of cheating in the stories.

Yunior seems to want to be a better man and stay away from the infidelity gene that has touched both his jerky, cold father and womanizing, unempathetic brother. The Dominican background and stories color this book all the more for the better, as usual, and give it that "glitter" that Junot knows how to lace through with some awesome prose. It can be beautiful and sad and funny and you are endeared to Yunior who is navigating the waters of the female species, only to disappoint and be disappointed in both himself and his actions.

It's almost like he just can't win.

Mostly by his own choices and decisions. It's kind of heartbreaking. My favorite story is "Alma.

It follows Yunior who begins sleeping with an older woman while cheating on his girlfriend Paloma. Yunior has cheated on his sweet girlfriend Magda which she discovers because his sidepiece informs her about it. Yunior invites Magda on a trip to the Dominican Republic for the purpose of rekindling their now-infidelity-broken romance.

How she loves him in this sad way yet does not trust him and can't relax enough to enjoy their relationship, always wondering if he's going to go back to his wife.

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A realization that maybe, this is as good as it gets. Maybe he did have the best and screwed it up. When did all the things I mean From the bottom of my heart start to lose meaning? Maybe I share it with too many people Back then it used to just feel like our secret Back when I would write and not think about how they receive it I be tryna manifest the things I needed And look, now, I mean, it's hard to believe it even for me But you're mindful of it all when your mind full of it all How they go from not wantin' me at all To wantin' to see me lose it all?

Things get dark, but my aura just starts glowin' I'm overcome with emotions Ones I can't access when I'm stoned sober Jealous ones still envy and niggas turn king cobra I could only speak what I know of Man, we wrote the book on calculated thinkin' And icy Heineken drinkin', and rival neighborhoods linkin' And puttin' your trust in someone with the risk of financially sinkin' All you did was write the book on garbage-ass Rollies Ego strokin', picture postin' Claimin' that you'd do it for motivational purposes only But you just had to show me See, I know, 'cause I study you closely I know when someone lyin' I notice people standin' for nothin' and gettin' tired I know what we're both thinkin' even when you're quiet Sometimes I gotta just make sure that I didn't lose you [Chorus: More Life , 6 to the world, gang shit.

We'll have things fixed soon. Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube. Lose You Lyrics [Intro: What have some famous people said about the song? Mixer Noel "Gadget" Campbell. Assistant Recording Engineer Gregg Moffett. Release Date March 18,

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