Junot Díaz’ novel This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead books, 2012) is a quick read if you can tolerate the montón of abusive language and the glut of misogyny that abides in the main characters from start to finish. Unabashedly creepy, the narrator Yunior is a Dominican male, which seems to be his excuse for being the kind of person one might describe as a complete asshole. The book opens: “I’m not a bad guy, I know how that sounds – defensive, unscrupulous – but it’s true. I’m like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good,” (p. 3). However, it seems to the average reader that there is scarcely a redemptive quality about this person other than his humanity.
When caught red-handed cheating on his girlfriend, he comes up with a disingenuous line that is repeated again to other partners later in his rocky love life. “I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try,” (p. 25). Pathetically, he says something just like it to Veronica (la Flaca) on page 84: “This can work, you say, we just have to let it.” It’s definitely Yunior who does not try to live up to his role as a monogamous or trusted sexual partner to any of his girls, most of whom he unabashedly refers to as sucias. No stone is left unturned as Díaz’s character Yunior relentlessly considers women in terms of sexual conquest, referring to the hips, curves, tetas and genitalia of each woman in his wake. With Carribbean slang and Spanish dialogue integrally woven throughout, Díaz writes a dodgy narration in the second person that attempts to connect directly with the readers and put them in Yunior’s unworthy shoes. “You, Yunior, have a girlfriend named Alma,” (p. 45) … “Alma is …. one of those Sonic Youth comic-book-reading alternatinas without whom you might have never lost your virginity.” In fact, Díaz’ Yunior is nothing more than an alter ego for himself, a case made evident by the metafictional qualities of the novel, which refers to its own creation. Caught cheating by another girlfriend, Yunior narrates a poor excuse back to himself: “Baby, you say; baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.” (p. 48). “Both your father and your brother were sucios. Shit, your father used to take you on his pussy runs, leave you in the car while he ran up into cribs to bone his girlfriends. Your brother was no better, boning girls in the bed next to yours. Sucios of the worst kind, and now it’s official: you are one, too. You had hoped the gene missed you skipped a generation, but clearly you were kidding yourself,” (p. 161). Yunior blames his scandalous sexual inadequacy (an inability to treat women, and presumably himself, with respect), upon his Dominican roots and the other men in his life, something verified by his mother and his friends (who partake in womanizing and extra-marital affairs). When he meets the “mujerón of your dreams”, (p. 170), she asks his mother about rumors of his casual sexual relationship with an older woman in the neighborhood, Miss Lora: “Doña, es verdad que tu hjo taba rapando una vieja? Your mother shakes her head in disgust. He’s just like his father and his brother. Dominican men, right, Doña? These three are worse than the rest.” “Your girl catches you cheating. (Well, actually she’s your finacée, but hey, in a bit it so won’t matter.) She could have caught you with one sucia, she could have caught you with two but as you’re a total batshit cuero who didn’t ever empty his e-mail trash can, she caught you with fifty! Sure, over a six-year period, but still. Fifty fucking girls? Goddamn.” (p. 175). The reader is left to wonder, is this guy trying to brag or is he incredibly delusional about relationships and self-respect? When Yunior, who eventually becomes an author of novels and a college professor (just like Díaz) refers to real love, does he mean it only from the point of view of his fiancée, because it’s not believable that this character himself would even be capable to love himself, much less another person. “She’ll stick around for a few months because you dated for a long long time. Because you went through much together—her father’s death, your tenure madness...And because love, real love, is not so easily shed,” (p. 175). “You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias. You block their e-mails. You change your phone number. You stop drinking You stop smoking. You claim you’re a sex addict and start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo, (p. 176). When he realizes how truly pathetic he is, he feigns regret in a self-righteous sort of way, opting for an encore act of deception, but his tricks are unconvincing to his scorned partner: “You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weak—It was the book! It was the pressure! And every hour like clockwork you say that you’re so so sorry. You try it all but one day she will simply sit up in and say, No more,” (p. 177). Díaz and Yunior rely on a conversational charm in the narration that is meant to be like an open book, unafraid of judgement from the reader. Although he does not consider himself to be a bad guy, he consistently treats women poorly and is shocked when other people treat him poorly. It makes for a character that is not self-aware and who lives by the rules of double standard. He is unable to empathize with the victims of his misogyny, but wants to call an alarm when he himself is a victim of others. It results in an inability for the reader to feel sorry for him in any real way. Moving to Boston for work, he reports that “Almost on cue a lot of racist shit starts happening.... White people pull up at traffic lights and scream at you with a hideous rage... It’s fucking scary… Three times, drunk whitedudes try to pick fights with you in different parts of the city. … You take it all very personally. I hope someone drops a fucking bomb on this city, you rant. This is why no people of color want to live here. Why all my black and Latino students leave as soon as they can,” (p. 178-179). Readers may wonder if in fact students are leaving because they have a complete asshole for a professor, given that we know how he may view his female students. In an attempt to win sympathy from the reader because of a bad break-up, Yunior fumbles when he focuses on his idea of his ex’s value in terms of outdated gender stereotypes. “The ex, as you’re now calling her, always cooked...set aside all the wings for you. That night you drink yourself into a stupor, spend two days recovering. You figure that’s as bad as it gets. You figure wrong. During finals a depression rolls over you, so profound you doubt there is a name for it. It feels like you’re being slowly pincered apart, atom by atom. (p.179). Yunior’s awful behavior and prejudicial view of women garner no support from most people who are more sensible about trusted relationships. As the crassly mannered and overly-sexualized sort, he cannot see past his immediate carnal desires to find emotional stability and personal well-being, as we see in an exchange with yet another girlfriend: “Are we going to see each other? She asks on week four, and you almost say yes but then your idiocy gets the best of you. It depends, you say. On what? She is instantly guarded...Where was that guard when she let the banilejo fuck her without a condom? - On whether you’re planning to give me ass anytime soon,” (p. 184). To wrap this up, This is how you lose her recounts an adult’s conquests and failures in sex and love, but reads like an adolescent boy’s misguided guide to womanizing and does not support a convincing story arc, given that the main character does not progress or evolve into a different state of mind, but remains a misguided jerk to the very end. With an unending string of sorry souls who fall into bed with him before realizing who they are dealing with, he is compelled to be a creep and live out regrettable actions that prove he does not treat others how he would choose to be treated himself. “You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those, (p. 193). Unlike Díaz’ previous novel, which was also narrated by Yunior, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), this novel lacks in scope and creative genius. Oscar Wao consisted of much of the same overly-sexualized machismo and adolescent aesthetic, but incorporated magical realism (faceless perpetrators, Trujillo's necromancic reputation) and boasted an archival narration that brought sympathetic characters to life, while enlightening readers on a legacy of colonialism, dictatorship, superstition and diaspora in the Dominican community. Admittedly, I would have liked to see even the smallest mention to the existence of Oscar or his sister Lola in this novel, given that it takes place in some of the same time-frame and has the same narrator. What’s worse is that in the final pages of This Is How You Lose Her, Díaz/Yunior promises what must prove to be a similar forthcoming novel: “You should really write the cheater’s guide to love. You think? I do,” (p. 212). The Cheater’s Guide to Love came out in 2014 and I have my doubts about the meaningfulness of love as portrayed by the character of Yunior. It will be a gamble, based on my mixed thoughts on the first two books by Díaz that I’ve read. Photo by Ruddy Corporan on Unsplash.
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Aaron BurnsI'm an entrepreneurial linguist and musician, a European in a former life, and an indefatigable conversationalist (like June). I'm available for hire as coach, teacher, writer, editor, analyst, consultant, marketeer, content specialist, translator, interpreter, MC, facilitator or performer. This blog is a portfolio of my interest and abilities in various languages of which I have extensive knowledge. I am also a student of several other languages that I am less intimately familiar with and they all bring me great joy. I currently hold degrees in Language and Literature as well as in Vocal Music Performance, both fields in which poetics and interpretation are no strangers. Archives
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