Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist; and a debut picture book, Islandborn. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Junot Díaz writes in an idiom so electrifying and distinct
it’s practically an act of aggression, at once enthralling, even
erotic in its assertion of sudden intimacy… [It is] a syncopated
swagger-step between opacity and transparency, exclusion and
inclusion, defiance and desire… His prose style is so irresistible,
so sheerly entertaining, it risks blinding readers to its larger
offerings. Yet he weds form so ideally to content that instead of
blinding us, it becomes the very lens through which we can see the
joy and suffering of the signature Díaz subject: what it means
to belong to a diaspora, to live out the possibilities and
ambiguities of perpetual insider/outsider status.” –The New York
Times Book Review
"Nobody does scrappy, sassy, twice-the-speed of sound dialogue
better than Junot Díaz. His exuberant short story collection,
called This Is How You Lose Her, charts the lives of Dominican
immigrants for whom the promise of America comes down to a
minimum-wage paycheck, an occasional walk to a movie in a mall and
the momentary escape of a grappling in bed." –Maureen Corrigan,
NPR
“Exhibits the potent blend of literary eloquence and street cred
that earned him a Pulitzer Prize… Díaz’s prose is vulgar, brave,
and poetic.” –O Magazine
“Searing, irresistible new stories… It’s a harsh world Díaz
conjures but one filled also with beauty and humor and buoyed by
the stubborn resilience of the human spirit.” –People
“Junot Díaz has one of the most distinctive and magnetic voices in
contemporary fiction: limber, streetwise, caffeinated and
wonderfully eclectic… The strongest tales are those fueled by the
verbal energy and magpie language that made Brief Wondrous Life so
memorable and that capture Yunior’s efforts to commute between two
cultures, Dominican and American, while always remaining an
outsider.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“These stories… are virtuosic, command performances that mine the
deceptive, lovelorn hearts of men with the blend of tenderness,
comedy and vulgarity of early Philip Roth. It's Díaz's voice that's
such a delight, and it is every bit his own, a melting-pot pastiche
of Spanglish and street slang, pop culture and Dominican culture,
and just devastating descriptive power, sometimes all in the same
sentence.” –USA Today
“Impressive… comic in its mopiness, charming in its madness and
irresistible in its heartfelt yearning.” –The Washington Post
"The dark ferocity of each of these stories and the types of love
it portrays is reason enough to celebrate this book. But the
collection is also a major contribution to the short story
form... It is an engrossing, ambitious book for readers who
demand of their fiction both emotional precision and linguistic
daring." –NPR
“The centripetal force of Díaz’s sensibility and the slangy
bar-stool confidentiality of his voice that he makes this
hybridization feel not only natural and irresistible, but
inevitable, the voice of the future… [This is How You Lose Her]
manages to be achingly sad and joyful at the same time. Its heart
is true, even if Yunior’s isn’t.” –Salon
“[A] propulsive new collection… [that] succeeds not only because of
the author's gift for exploring the nuances of the male… but
because of a writing style that moves with the rhythm and grace of
a well-danced merengue.” –Seattle Times
“In Díaz’s magisterial voice, the trials and tribulations of
sex-obsessed objectifiers become a revelation.” –The Boston
Globe
“Scooch over, Nathan Zuckerman. New Jersey has bred a new literary
bad boy… A.” –Entertainment Weekly
“Ribald, streetwise, and stunningly moving—a testament, like most
of his work, to the yearning, clumsy ways young men come of age.”
–Vogue
“[An] excellent new collection of stories… [Díaz is] an energetic
stylist who expertly moves between high-literary storytelling and
fizzy pop, between geek culture and immigrant life, between romance
and high drama.” –IndieBound
“Taken together, [these stories’] braggadocio softens into
something much more vulnerable and devastating. The intimacy and
immediacy… is not just seductive but downright conspiratorial… A
heartbreaker.” –The Daily Beast
"Díaz manages a seamless blend of high diction and low, of poetry
and vulgarity… Look no further for home truths on sex and
heartbreak." –The Economist
“This collection of stories, like everything else [Díaz has]
written, feels vital in the literal sense of the word. Tough,
smart, unflinching, and exposed, This is How You Lose Her is the
perfect reminder of why Junot Díaz won the Pulitzer Prize… [He]
writes better about the rapid heartbeat of urban life than pretty
much anyone else." –The Christian Science Monitor
“Filled with Díaz’s signature searing voice, loveable/despicable
characters and so-true-it-hurts goodness.” –Flavorwire
“Díaz writes with subtle and sharp brilliance… He dazzles us with
his language skills and his story-making talents, bringing us a
narrative that is starkly vernacular and sophisticated,
stylistically complex and direct… A spectacular read.” –Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
"[This is How You Lose Her] has maturity in content, if not in
ethical behavior… Díaz’s ability to be both conversational and
formal, eloquent and plainspoken, to say brilliant things
Trojan-horsed in slang and self-deprecation, has a way of making
you put your guard completely down and be effected in surprising
and powerful ways." –The Rumpus
“As tales of relationship redemption go, each of the nine relatable
short stories in Junot Díaz's consummate collection This Is How You
Lose Her triumphs… Through interrogative second-person narration
and colloquial language peppered with Spanish, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author authentically captures Junior's cultural and
emotional dualities.” –Metro
“Searing, sometimes hilarious, and always disarming… Readers will
remember why everyone wants to write like Díaz, bring him home, or
both. Raw and honest, these stories pulsate with raspy ghetto
hip-hop and the subtler yet more vital echo of the human heart.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Díaz’s standout fiction remains pinpoint, sinuous, gutsy, and
imaginative… Each taut tale of unrequited and betrayed love and
family crises is electric with passionate observations and
off-the-charts emotional and social intelligence… Fast-paced,
unflinching, complexly funny, street-talking tough, perfectly made,
and deeply sensitive, Díaz’s gripping stories unveil lives shadowed
by prejudice and poverty and bereft of reliable love and trust.
These are precarious, unappreciated, precious lives in which
intimacy is a lost art, masculinity a parody, and kindness, reason,
and hope struggle to survive like seedlings in a war zone.”
–Booklist (starred review)
“Díaz’s third book is as stunning as its predecessors. These
stories are hard and sad, but in Díaz’s hands they also crackle.”
–Library Journal (starred review)
“Magnificent… an exuberant rendering of the driving rhythms and
juicy Spanglish vocabulary of immigrant speech… sharply observed
and morally challenging.” –Kirkus
“A beautifully stirring look at ruined relationships and lost
love—and a more than worthy follow-up to [Díaz’s] 2007 Pulitzer
winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” –Bookpage
"In This Is How You Lose Her, Díaz writes with subtlety and
grace, once again demonstrating his remarkable facility for
developing fully-realized and authentic characters with an
economical rawness... Díaz skillfully portrays his protagonist
so vividly, and with so much apparent honesty, that Yunior’s
voice comes across with an immediacy that never once feels
inauthentic." –California Literary Review
"Díaz continues to dazzle with his dynamite, street-bruised wit.
The bass line of this collection is a thumpingly raw and sexual
foray into lives that claw against poverty and racism. It is a wild
rhythm that makes more vivid the collection’s heart-busted
steadiness." –Dallas Morning News
Ask a Question About this Product More... |