A guide to love from a chronic cheater

This Is How You Lose Her is a series of short stories that deal mostly with men’s infidelity in relationships, with the exception of one of the stories being from a women’s point of view. Readers of Diaz’s first book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, will recognize Yunior, who appears repeatedly in the stories in relationships with different women.

A running theme throughout these stories is how men don’t often see women as a real person. Like Yunior’s dog brother, Rafa, who sees and discards women with no concern for their feelings, even as he is dying from cancer; or how Yunior — a chronic cheater, it appears — believes that profusely apologizing, or flat-out lying, about past transgressions can mend things with his lovers. The behavior portrayed in these stories by the male species is appalling, and at times, wholly humanizing. In the Miss Lora chapter, a teenage Yunior wonders whether if he will be able to escape how his brother and father acts, and be a faithful boyfriend to a girl who won’t let him get to second base. There is also a sense that being a Dominican man means that there is a cultural acceptance/exasperation to how shitty behavior from men can be expected, and even forgiven.

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