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A review by gadicohen93
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz
5.0
Disclaimer: Did not read stories in order. Did not read stories in one go. Did not read the one story from the female perspective cause I couldn't get into it. I read them gradually--some in the New Yorker when they were originally published, some on the net after looking 'em up, some in the Brown bookstore afte stopping by to pick up the book and catch up on the stories I hadn't gotten around to yet.
I love Junot. I'm so glad he exists in the world. Motherfucker has talent like no other. True Genius. I'm writing some stories now and I have to say I'm grateful, so fucking grateful, to his fiction. I didn't really understand why I was so grateful until last night, when I saw Junot at RISD and he was so fucking great. The Best. He unpacked everything about his fiction that I emulate in my own with an authenticity that was so appropriate it was ridiculous:
What I love about Junot is that he's real. His fiction burns with the truth. His Spanglish? This code-switching may throw some people off, but it hooked into me, made me really feel--in ways not many other writers can do--the density of the real, the way reality unravels not in linear English but in the forever-confusion that is consciousness, his consciousness. We get to truly see the inside of Yunior, the way his mind functions, the paradoxes and wandering madness that his inward stream of thoughts creates from the outside world.
More than anything, Junot last night proved to me why some things I write are better than others: I need to write for me, not for anyone else. I don't need to pander to anyone. Shit, I don't even need to pander to myself--I just need to write what I know, because only then can readers see themselves in my reality, or at least feel like they see themselves in my reality. He used the specific term "economies of signification"--that he doesn't need to define everything he talks about, that his Jersey might not evoke my Jersey, but my signification of Jersey will be hit hard by his, will transform, and that is what fiction needs to do: It needs to transform. It needs to hit hard.
Favorites:
Cause I read all of them in a weird order and over the period of a few months, some of these stories--the ones I read most recently--I remember more than others. The winter one, when they're children, just moved to the U.S., touched me so much, reminded me of the one house I stayed in for a month when I first moved to the U.S. when I was 10, tears in my eyes.
As usual, Junot's dad pisses me off, and I feel so much for his mom.
I love Junot. I'm so glad he exists in the world. Motherfucker has talent like no other. True Genius. I'm writing some stories now and I have to say I'm grateful, so fucking grateful, to his fiction. I didn't really understand why I was so grateful until last night, when I saw Junot at RISD and he was so fucking great. The Best. He unpacked everything about his fiction that I emulate in my own with an authenticity that was so appropriate it was ridiculous:
What I love about Junot is that he's real. His fiction burns with the truth. His Spanglish? This code-switching may throw some people off, but it hooked into me, made me really feel--in ways not many other writers can do--the density of the real, the way reality unravels not in linear English but in the forever-confusion that is consciousness, his consciousness. We get to truly see the inside of Yunior, the way his mind functions, the paradoxes and wandering madness that his inward stream of thoughts creates from the outside world.
More than anything, Junot last night proved to me why some things I write are better than others: I need to write for me, not for anyone else. I don't need to pander to anyone. Shit, I don't even need to pander to myself--I just need to write what I know, because only then can readers see themselves in my reality, or at least feel like they see themselves in my reality. He used the specific term "economies of signification"--that he doesn't need to define everything he talks about, that his Jersey might not evoke my Jersey, but my signification of Jersey will be hit hard by his, will transform, and that is what fiction needs to do: It needs to transform. It needs to hit hard.
Favorites:
Cause I read all of them in a weird order and over the period of a few months, some of these stories--the ones I read most recently--I remember more than others. The winter one, when they're children, just moved to the U.S., touched me so much, reminded me of the one house I stayed in for a month when I first moved to the U.S. when I was 10, tears in my eyes.
As usual, Junot's dad pisses me off, and I feel so much for his mom.