23.12.2025

This Is How You Lose Her

By Junot Díaz

“The half life of love is forever.”

Junot Díaz writes in an idiom so electrifying and distinct it’s practically an act of aggression, at once alarming and enthralling, even erotic in its assertion of sudden intimacy: “Dude was figureando hard. Had always been a papi chulo, so of course he dove right back into the grip of his old sucias, snuck them down into the basement whether my mother was home or not.”

Breaking easily and often out of first-person narration to address his readers directly, Díaz flatters us with his confidences. Yet his prose also throws up walls, equally abruptly and equally seductively. Refusing to condescend or even pause for edification, the narrative moves along at speed, exciting us with its demands.

This, then, is the Díaz rhythm: a syncopated stagger-step between opacity and transparency, exclusion and inclusion, defiance and desire.

His new collection, “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,” as well as parts of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”

 

Junot Díaz - Christmas Special

Junot Díaz - This Is How You Lose Her
Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz - Drown