How You Lose Her By Junot Diaz

772 Words2 Pages

Hegemonic Masculinity Junot Diaz has a "powerful insight into the realities of the Caribbean diaspora, American assimilation, and lives lived between cultures" -this according to the citation for his 2012 MacArthur Fellowship. This is How You Lose Her, brings forth an honest modern perception of gender dynamics as well as hegemonic masculinities. Yunior De La Casas is a Dominican American man as well as the narrator of a great deal of short stories in Junot Diaz's modern collection, This is How You Lose Her. It would not be difficult to characterize Yunior as a "sucio" (translation: a cheater, a man who lacks an understanding of women.) “Both your father and your brother were sucios. Shit, your father used to take you on his pussy runs, …show more content…

Your brother was no better, boning girls on the bed next to yours. You had hoped the gene missed you, skipped a generation, but clearly you were kidding yourself. The blood always shows, you say to Paloma on the ride to school next day. Yunior, she stirs from her doze, i don't have time for your craziness, OK?"(Diaz, 165) From this quote, it is evident how much of a role Yunior's father as well as his brother Rafa have played in his life. Growing up Yunior was continuously around sex, therefore sex is primarily his main focus when it comes to women and relationships. In This is How You Lose Her eight out of the nine collection of stories revolve around unsuccessful romances and relationships. Male infidelity is a recurring theme throughout the compilation of stories. "Miss Lorra" as well as the last story, "The Cheaters Guide to Love," demonstrates Yunior persistently making an effort to attain a romantic ideal that is inevitably out of range as he continues to be a typical example of his womanizing father and brother Rafa. Yunior is conflicted as well as divided within himself, his relationship with his father and brother Rafa shaped and ultimately molded not only how he thinks but how he acts towards women. Yunior

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