We have all heard the saying, “What goes around comes around”, in this particular book, “This Is How You Lose Her” written by Junot Diaz, the main character Yunior learns firsthand what it is like to have karma served to him on a cold silver platter. Throughout this book Yunior has several polygamous relationships with different women. He cheats on them, and lies to them, all the time thinking that this is what love is. Yunior did not have a father figure to show him how to treat women or the difference between right and wrong. From a young age he watched his big brother bring in different women night after night, and thought that was the way to treat his relationships.
In the chapter “The Sun, The Moon, The Stars” we are introduced to Yunior and his girlfriend Magda. Now, Yunior
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claimed that he loved Magda, but if he loved her then why did he cheat on her with the girl who had all the eighties hairstyles? The way Magda found out about the affair was through letters that Cassandra, the girl with eighties hair, had written to her. She gave Magda details about the things her and Yunior had done and there was no denying that it was him. Yunior begged Magda to forgive him; he had even taken her on vacation to his home country. They visited his family and the beaches, he had paid for everything. It was there on his trip that he realized, “As soon as you start thinking about the beginning it’s the end” (Diaz 24). Five months after their trip Yunior had received a letter from Magda, saying that she had met someone. She ended the letter with “Except he loves me”. That must have hit Yunior like a ton of bricks. Even after all he had gone through with Magda he still had not learned his lesson. Next, we meet Alma, who is describe to be a beautiful young Latina woman.
She is different than Yunior, she is a little bit lighter than he is, grew up in Hoboken but spent most of her days in the lower east side. She seems to come from a wealthier family then he, as she has a car that she lets him use from time to time. They are opposites and I guess that’s why they were attracted to each other to begin with. Yunior himself describes it as a “Opposites attract sort of thing, it’s a great sex sort of thing, it’s a no thinking sort of thing. It’s wonderful!” (Diaz 49). This relationship with Alma is mostly based off of lust and sexual infatuation, she does things with him that he’s never experienced with any other girl he has been with. Yunior seems to admire Alma for the way she is sexy and wild. Yet, she is still not enough. One-day Alma finds the journal he writes in, and inside were stories of all the other girls he had been with and cheated on Alma with. When she confronted him, he tried to lie and say it was for a book he was writing,” This is how you lose her.” Needless to say, he lost Alma too, the same way he had lost Magda only this time he wasn’t able to convince her to
stay. In the chapter “Flaca” Yunior writes a letter to his ex-girlfriend Veronica. He is talking about all the good times and memories they had together. From what it seems he really did care about Flaca, the only problem was that he was letting the influence of his friends get into his head. He tried to play it off like they were just in it for the sex, which is what it was supposed to be from the beginning. But the more time they spent together and the more she came over and fed him and took care of him, he had fallen for her. Although he did not cheat on Veronica like he had done to the other girls, he still did not show her the respect that a woman deserved. The longer the relationship had gone on, Flaca was the only one trying to keep it alive. Always reminding Yunior, “This can work, you say. We just have to let it.” (Diaz 86) But Yunior was too prideful, he did not want to claim her as his in front of his boys. And if she was lucky enough or they were on “speaking terms” as he would call it, then they could spend time alone without his boys around. On the last night they had spent together their relationship had fallen apart, the next morning when Yunior woke up Veronica was gone, without a word.
The book “Dead Girls Don’t Lie” written by Jennifer Shaw Wolf focuses on a variety of different ideas and topics, mostly fixating the murder of the main character’s best friend Rachel. With this also comes gang violence, lost and found relationships, and the fact that some people will go to great extents in order to keep a lethal secret from the public eye. Rachel and Jaycee were best friends up until 6 months before where the book started. But, an altercation between them caused the breakup of their long lasted friendship. It is soon found out that Rachel was shot through her bedroom window, which is at first suspected to be gang violence. When Jaycee doesn’t answer her phone on the night Rachel was murdered, she received a text that circulates
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
This frustration acted as a vehicle for her to gain a desire to be more
Each time he progresses physically an injury hinders him, just as how each time he progresses in a romantic way misogyny hinders him. In year three Yunior picks up running and becomes obsessed to keep his mind off the ex, but he suffers a foot injury that halts his progress physically and emotionally (7). Around the same time, he starts a relationship with Noemi, who excites Yunior, but he breaks up with her seeing as she won't sleep with him in the first three weeks of the relationship (5). His inability to see progress in both his physical training and his relationship cause him to shortsightedly end both and thus his chauvinism ends the first interpersonal relationship since his ex that held any possibility of
In the poem “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party,” Sharon Olds uses imagery to convey pride in her daughter’s growing femininity. What would seem to be another childhood pool party for the girl turns into an event that marks a rite of passage to adulthood. Though the narrator is reluctant of her daughter’s search for an identity, she ultimately sees her daughter’s transformation to womanhood as admirable. Olds’ pride is first shown when the girl begins to lose her innocence from the unfamiliar surroundings of masculine men. The narrator says, “They will strip to their suits, her body hard and indivisible as a prime number” (5-6). The girl’s stiff and confident stature that this image conveys suggests that she is anxious yet willing to progress
As a journalist in 1920 for the New York Herald Tribune, Sophie Treadwell was assigned to go to Mexico to follow the situation after the Mexican Revolution. (Mexican Revolution 1910-1917) She covered many important aspects of the Mexican Revolution during this time, including relations between the U.S. and Mexico. She was even permitted an interview with Pancho Villa in August 1921 at his headquarters. This interview and other events that she experienced in Mexico are presumably what led her to write the play Gringo. In Gringo Treadwell tries to depict the stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes that Mexicans and Americans have about each other. There is a demonstration of how Mexican women are looked at in the Mexican culture and how they see themselves. The play also corresponds to similar events that occurred during the Mexican Revolution.
This novel is a story of a Chicano family. Sofi, her husband Domingo together with their four daughters – Esperanza, Fe, Caridad, and Loca live in the little town of Tome, New Mexico. The story focuses on the struggles of Sofi, the death of her daughters and the problems of their town. Sofi endures all the hardships and problems that come her way. Her marriage is deteriorating; her daughters are dying one by one. But, she endures it all and comes out stronger and more enlightened than ever. Sofi is a woman that never gives up no matter how poorly life treats her. The author- Ana Castillo mixes religion, super natural occurrences, sex, laughter and heartbreak in this novel. The novel is tragic, with no happy ending but at the same time funny and inspiring. It is full of the victory of the human spirit. The names of Sofi’s first three daughters denote the three major Christian ideals (Hope, Faith and Charity).
The article '' love: the right chemistry'' by Anastasia Toufexis efforts to explain the concept of love from a scientific aspect in which an amateur will understand. Briefly this essay explains and describe in a scientific way how people's stimulation of the body works when you're falling in love. The new scientific researches have given the answer through human physiology how genes behave when your feelings for example get swept away. The justification for this is explained by how the brain gets flooded by chemicals. The author expresses in one point that love isn't just a nonsense behavior nor a feeling that exhibits similar properties as of a narcotic drug. This is brought about by an organized chemical chain who controls different depending on the individual. A simple action such as a deep look into someone's eyes can start the simulation in the body that an increased production of hand sweat will start. The tingly feeling inside your body is a result of a scientific delineation which makes the concept of love more concretely and more factually mainly for researchers and the wide...
Torvald and Alymer think they’re inlove with their wives but, they are not. Alymer and Torvald love their possessions, similar to loving a car. They love the feeling and the moments they get to spend on earth mesmerizing their beautiful uniqueness, but they do not care about the wellbeing of the other person. “Women define visibility as including communication, verbal and non-verbal, show the slipperiness of the slope, and raise question of consciousness.” (Deutsch, 1889) In both relationships there was a lack of communication, intimacy, and respect. Nora and Georgianna both wanted their loved ones to show concern for them even in rough circumstances, but both men failed either because of selfness or love of science. When Torvald received the IUE from Krogstat, his immediate response was “I’m saved!” Being selfish his first thoughts are of himself rather than, his kids, and Nora. Aylmer’s attention to his wife’s birthmark over time, drove Georgianna insane to the point where she would die trying to remove a little mark on her face. Alymer started to point out that she is no longer perfect because of the birthmark. After you marry someone you accept their flaws internally and externally, and both failed to do so therefore, they lost their wives.
Sanity is subjective. Every individual is insane to another; however it is the people who possess the greatest self-restraint that prosper in acting “normal”. This is achieved by thrusting the title of insanity onto others who may be unlike oneself, although in reality, are simply non-conforming, as opposed to insane. In Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, this fine line between sanity and insanity is explored to great lengths. Through the unveiling of Susanna’s past, the reasoning behind her commitment to McLean Hospital for the mentally ill, and varying definitions of the diagnosis that Susanna received, it is evident that social non-conformity is often confused with insanity.
This is How You Lose Her is a book written by Junot Diaz consisting of short stories, told by the protagonist, Yunior. Yunior’s character is described as the Dominican guy who struggles with infidelity and unable to love others full-heartedly. Diaz also shows how in Dominican culture; men carry the reputation of being womanizers and usually is pass from one generation to the next. Throughout the book, he tells us stories pertaining to the relationships he had with the women he had in his life, and his family. From the stories one can assume that Yunior, caught up in a vicious cycle was destined to follow into patriarchy; a father who cheated on his mother, and an oldest brother who followed
What goes around comes around. Sometimes life isn’t perfect. Nothing on earth is perfect, we all make mistakes and we learn from them. That’s part of being human. Relationships come and go but every time we brake up with someone, they teach us a lesson. They could teach us to become a better person or they could bring out the worst of us. In the novel called This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, Yunior didn’t have good relationships because he always cheated. For example, he cheated on Magda with Cassandra and he cheated on Alma with Laxmi. Yunior sometimes loved them but his way of loving them was unique. He was scared to be committed to just one person. Maybe he was scared to fall in love. We live in a generation where we see all kind of crazy stuff happening in relationships. Maybe that’s how society wants us to feel,
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
In This Is How You Lose Her, the narrator/character of Yunior faces various dilemmas and struggles with who he is as a person. It is a story of how a character, Yunior, loses the love of his life through his own infidelity. The book also goes into detail into how men are taught to think that woman are not fully human and the very difficult process to which they learn the truth. In general, Yunior struggles with being a son, a brother, a lover, and many more throughout the novel. We see Yunior grow as a person and blossom into adulthood. While the book gives an overall outlook into his life and of those around him, we can piece together a chronological understanding of his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We can also see an overview of the people around him and in his life experiences and growth. The entire book is a collection of several unconnected stories that told by the same narrator, Yunior. Yunior appears as a reckless Dominican guy who’s unable to love others full heartedly. Throughout the book, Yunior’s stories portray love, betrayal and violence compressed and written in a textured tone while expressing difficult emotions mixed with cultural displacement and rejection from his adopted country.
The death of Oscar and his mother Beli marked a new beginning: Yunior tries to face his own issues and focus on his own emotional baggage by building a family, working as a teacher, and similar to Oscar, writing as an emotional outlet; Lola has a lovely family and a young daughter named Isis, the fourth generation of the de Leon’s family. Isis is expected to be the one who puts an end to the curse fuku, “I’ll take her down to my basement and open the four refrigerators where I store her tio’s books, his games, his manuscripts, his comic books, his papers...And maybe, just maybe, if she’s as smart and as brave as I’m expecting she’ll be, she’ll take all we’ve done and all we’ve learned and add her own insights and she’ll put an end to it [the fukú]. That is what, on my best days, I hope. What I dream” (Diaz 330-331). The collection of Oscar’s work are evidence and documentations for Oscar’s life, simultaneously offers the knowledge to fight against the curse. Yunior hopes that Isis will come to visit him some day and that he will be able to share the history of her family with her, thus she can add her insights and become aware of the curse. It resolves the tension between the characters as they hope for a new start. The ultimate purpose for constructing the narrative is for Isis to overcome the curse and for literal readers to take actions against the various forms of oppression in the narrative. These goals, however, are Yunior’s desire, not the actuality. Later on, the quote from Watchmen suggests that “nothing ever ends”, a paradox that undoes the finality of Isis’s ending of the curse (Diaz 331). As much as Yunior wants to break away de Leon’s family and every other Dominican family from the curse, he is afraid that the quote speaks the truth, everything continues in a cycle.