This Is How You Lose Her

This Is How You Lose Her is a short story collection published in 2012 by the Dominican American author Junot Díaz, and his second story collection. The book is comprised of nine stories, most of which were originally published in The New Yorker magazine. Eight of the stories feature the same narrator, Yunior, who also appears as a character in Díaz’s other major works, Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This Is How You Lose Her was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.  Each story is discussed below, and in chronological order, as opposed to the order they are presented in the collection.

Plot Summary

“Invierno” introduces the reader to Yunior, who at the age of seven moves from the Dominican Republic to New Jersey with his mother—referred to as “Mami”—and his brother Rafa. There, they are reunited with Papi, their father, who has been working in the US and sent for them after five years apart. It’s clear from the first sentence that Yunior is not happy with Papi, who is indifferent to his family and cruel with the boys. One night during a snowstorm, Yunior and Rafa chase Mami outside in the snow. There, they see the landfill and the ocean for the first time. This is the only story that features Papi.

Chronologically, “Nilda” is next. Yunior is about 14 years old. His brother Rafa is having sex with 15-year-old Nilda in the bedroom the two brothers share. Yunior, a comics fan, has a crush on Nilda, who lacks a stable home and loving parents. Rafa, meanwhile, is a womanizer. They date just one summer. Years later when Yunior is 23, he runs into Nilda at the laundromat. She is missing teeth and pudgier. While Yunior still imagines running away with her, they part ways and lose contact.

In “The Pura Principle,” Yunior is approximately sixteen and struggling with his older brother Rafa’s cancer. Neither he nor Mami can control the rebellious Rafa, who takes a job and gets attached to a recently-immigrated Dominican girl named Pura. Amused by how agitated Mami is by Pura, Rafa marries Pura unannounced. In response, Mami throws him out. Rafa returns and steals the TV and mattresses. Yunior, finally stronger than the ailing Rafa, stops him from stealing money from Mami’s hidden stash. After Rafa falls ill again, Pura asks for money and disappears. When Rafa is finally home from the hospital, he never mentions Pura again. One day, Yunior is knocked unconscious while walking home. He later discovers that Rafa threw a rock at his head from his window as payback.

While grieving for Rafa, who has died, Yunior’s finds himself attracted to a much older woman in “Miss Lora.” Yunior carries on his secret affair with Miss Lora for years. It starts while Yunior is dating Paloma, who won’t have sex with him. When he mentions Miss Lora likes Yunior, Paloma calls her a “disgusting old hag.” Yunior becomes obsessed with Miss Lora, who is uninhibited and mature. She gets a job as a teacher at his high school teaching, and one day the gymnasts convince her to show off, so she does a perfect back flip. After Yunior goes onto college, he continues to see Miss Lora. However, their age difference embarrasses Yunior, and the relationship ends.

In “Alma,” Alma is Yunior’s college girlfriend who is an artist and sexually adventurous. One day, he drives up in her car to find her waiting with his journal, where he’s detailed his sexual affairs. She curses him out. He picks up the journal and claims the entries are part of a novel he is working on. This lie ends the relationship.

In “Flaca,” Yunior dates a skinny “whitetrash” girl named Veronica, whom he calls Flaca. They are in the same James Joyce class in college. Yunior only calls Flaca when he has no one else, and then she offers to come over. Their relationship continues in this manner for two years. At a beach called Spruce Run, Yunior watches her in the water. After Flaca tells Yunior that she loves him, the two never speak again.

In “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars,” Yunior has a “good girl” girlfriend named Magda who hyperventilates when she receives a letter from Cassandra detailing her affair with Yunior. Yunior takes Magda to Santo Domingo for vacation and to repair the relationship. Guys hit on her every time he turns his back, and he blows up at one of them. Even while there, he flirts and schemes with other women. One night, Yunior gets drunk and goes out to the Cave of the Jagua. Two wealthy men he just met lower him headfirst into the cave. In the darkness, he has visions that his relationship is over. When he returns to the hotel, Magda is crying and wants to leave. Yunior attempts to convince her the relationship can continue.

Finally, in “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” Yunior is a tenured Ivy League professor. His fiancée reads his old emails and discovers he cheated on her with 50 women over six years. He takes her on vacation, but she just walks on the beach alone. Eventually she cuts ties and he moves to Boston, which he hates. Yunior, who is Dominican and regularly refers to non-Whites—including himself—as “n*****s,” has many racial confrontations with Whites in Boston. He tries to find a new girl, but nothing works out. A young law student uses him to take care of her while she’s pregnant by lying and saying Yunior is the father of the child, before revealing the child is not his when it’s born. Yunior travels to the Dominican Republic with his friend Elvis. Elvis is excited that he has a toddler son, kept secret from his family. But at Yunior’s insistence, a paternity test reveals the boy is not his child. Yunior finally reads the book his ex-fiancée mailed to him five years earlier. In the book, Yunior is confronted with his deceit and feels ashamed. This ultimately leads him to write more.

The only story not narrated by Yunior is “Otravida, Otravez.” This story is narrated by Yasmin, a Dominican woman who works in a hospital laundry room. She starts a family with a man who left his wife and son in the Dominican Republic. She has anxiety about his two worlds and secretly reads the letters from his wife. Although they move in together, she allows his other relationship to continue.