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Woojin Kim
Professor Randall Kenan
English 216
18 March 2014
Craft Analysis of Junot Díaz’s This Is How You Love Her
“He’s a Jersey boy—a bad boy, a very bad boy. But with an astonishing commitment to the
fucking craft.” – Junot Díaz (Kachka)
1. Biography
Junot Díaz, or Yunior to his close friends and family, was born on New Year’s Eve in
1968 (Kachka; “Junot Diaz”). When he was six, his family, including four siblings, moved to
Parlin, New Jersey from Santo Domingo to reunite with their father (“Junot Diaz”). Back in the
Dominican Republic, Díaz’s parents had been deeply affected by the ongoing political
turbulence—his father had served as military police under the suppressive Trujillo Dictatorship,
and his mother was wounded during the U.S. invasion after Trujillo’s assassination (Interview
with Dave Davies). Though the family escaped to the States, the dictatorship lingered within the
house. Díaz describes his father as a “military dad[…]seriously into that kind of discipline”; for
instance, he would check that their shoelaces were neatly knotted, and even encourage Díaz and
his brothers to fight other kids (Interview with Dave Davies).
Despite his stringent rule, Díaz’s father was often away and unfaithful (Hansen). Outside
of home, conditions were not much better. Díaz grew up in an “immigrant ghetto” (Hansen), an
environment where “It’s easier to write ten awesome novels than to not have a kid” (Kachka).
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During that time, his brother battled with Leukemia, and spent ten years undergoing
chemotherapy before recovery (Interview with Anna Barnet). Yet one good thing his father
allowed to be masculine was reading, and Díaz read, and read (Interview with Dave Davies).
Reading was his English booster, and also his oasis from the struggles of immigrant life
(Interview with Anna Barnet).
A work ethic sourced from survival guilt, from the thought that “your mom is out there
cleaning toilets for a living a full day and then coming home and still holding a family together,”
helped Díaz along to Rutgers College, and then to a MFA from Cornell (Interview with Dave
Davies; “Junot Diaz”). During his student-hood, various jobs from delivering pool tables to
working at a steel mill kept him afloat, though they would take their toll a couple decades later in
the form of spinal stenosis (Kachka; Interview with Sam Anderson). But for his writing career it
was a worthwhile investment. At the age of 26, he signed off his debut collection Drown, which
set standards soaring (Kachka). And he did not disappoint when he released his next major work
in 2007, the novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao that earned him a Pulitzer the year
after (Interview with Shoshana Akabas). This Is How You Lose Her published in 2012 is the third
and, for now, last installment from the narrator Yunior, the protagonist who shares much of
Díaz’s life experiences (Interview with Shoshana Akabas).
Díaz now splits his time between Boston, where he teaches creative writing as a tenured
professor at MIT, and Harlem, New York, one of his three original homes other than the D.R.
and New Jersey (Interview with Anna Barnet; Interview with Cressida Leyshon). He remains
entrenched in Dominican communities in both (Interview with Noah Charney). As a writer, his
pace is almost torturously slow, clashing against the current culture of “machine-speed
productivity” (Interview with Gina Frangello)—for one, This is How You Lose Her took sixteen
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years to complete (Interview with Steve Inskeep). And for Oscar Wao, he recounts the sheer
despair that the editing process cost him, along with a decade and a fiancée (Díaz, “Becoming a
Writer”; Kachka). Understandably, to Díaz, “a writer is a writer because even when there is no
hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway” (Díaz,
“Becoming a Writer"). With such dedication to the art, it is fitting to call him, “in the truest sense
of the word, a craftsman” (Interview with Gina Frangello).
Díaz also cofounded the Voices of Our Nation, a workshop for writers of color, and is an
editor for The Boston Review (Interview with Noah Charney). Both of which, still, deal with
writing.
2. Summaries
2.1 Introduction
This Is How You Lose Her is not a typical short story collection, nor a novel. Rather it
lives somewhere in-between, where Díaz can merge “the novel’s long immersion into characterworld and the story anthology’s energetic (and mortal) brevity—the linked collection is unique
in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously” (Interview with Gina Frangello).
The short stories are all connected by a common theme (infidelity) and author (Yunior), but each
episode is self-sufficient, and does not necessarily sculpt the next. Díaz doubts that had he gone
for a novel, whether he could have achieved “the same jagged punch, the same longing and
silences that rise up from the gaps in and between the linked stories” (Interview with Cressida
Leyshon).
That Díaz premeditatedly wrote all these stories to exist within a larger context (i.e. this
collection)—in the process sifting out “swell ideas for stories that I had to dump in the end
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because they would never fit into the larger pattern of the narrative” (Interview with Cressida
Leyshon)—is crucial in assessing each story independently. Each story enriches the theme of the
rise and fall of Yunior as a cheater, a “Dominican male slut” (Interview with Rebecca Elliot),
whose struggle is “to overcome his cultural training and inner habits in order to create lasting
relationships” (Interview with Gina Frangello)—“to imagine women as human” (Interview with
Sam Anderson). The hard-learnt lesson is that at the end, after and only after he has lost the girl
he meant to marry, he “for the first time in his life[…]is actually capable of being in a normal
relationship,[…]has the heart necessary[….]For the first time in his life, he’s actually ready”
(Interview with Steve Inskeep). Though it is tragic, Díaz also considers that step “an enormous
victory for him” (Interview with Steve Inskeep).
That is the overarching summary of the book. The rest of the section discusses in
particular four stories: the first of the collection, “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars”; “Alma”;
“Otravida, Otravez”; and the finale, “The Cheater’s Guide to Love.” These are also the main
ones featured in the craft section of this paper.
2.2 “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars”
This is the “disaster vacation” story, as Díaz puts it (Interview with Sam Anderson). The
first line, the first introduction Yunior offers is: “I’m not a bad guy” (3), though he did cheat on
his girlfriend, Magdalena, a Catholic Cuban-American girl from Jersey. Their relationship wasn’t
“the sun, the moon, and the stars, but it wasn’t bullshit either” (19). But things got rocky, and
Yunior cheats with Cassandra from work.
Months later, after ties with Cassandra had been long severed, when things with Magda
“were on an upswing,” Magda gets a letter from Cassandra telling all. Magda is pissed. Against
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advice from all her friends and family, she takes Yunior back, but things are different—she asks
bitter questions after sex, gets a makeover, and goes out dancing with her friends instead of
hanging out with him. Yunior thinks he knows what she’s up to, “Making me aware of my
precarious position in her life” (7).
In hopes of reconciliation Yunior takes her to the Dominican Republic. By Day 3 Magda
is miserable. Desperate, Yunior opts for Casa de Campo, a resort that “has got beaches like the
rest of Island has got problems” (15). But for all the beaches, the tension only intensifies;
“You’re such a pestilence,” Magda tells Yunior (16). On the last night out, Yunior remembers
the first time he and Magda talked, and that’s when he knows it’s done. “As soon as you start
thinking about the beginning, it’s the end” (24). When he returns, he tries to make amends, but
their relationship has long been doomed.
2.3 “Alma”
Alma is ethnically Dominican and goes to Rutgers, but that might be the only thing she and
Yunior have in common. She barely speaks Spanish, likes cars, can’t cook, and is extravagantly
dirty in bed. But Yunior’s also been doing the dirty with a freshman—Alma finds out via his
journal. It’s the same journal she’s holding when he picks her up one day, and straight away he
knows that she knows. He knows it’s all over. After a string of fury and cursing from her, Yunior
can only explain, “Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her” (48).
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2.4 “Otravida, Otravez” (“Another Life, Another Time”)
This is the only story in the collection from a perspective other than Yunior’s. More
substantially, it’s told by a female narrator, specifically the woman for whom his father left his
mother, but still is written by Yunior.
The woman, Yasmin, is twenty-eight, and moved to the States five years ago to find work.
She has found it washing the sheets at a hospital, and now manages four girls, migrant workers,
who often disappear and are quickly replaced. Ramón is her Dominican lover (and Yunior’s
father). He works at a bread factory and has a dream to own a house in America. He has worked
odd jobs and saved eight years for it, with an ambition such that “just watching him you could
believe it” (61).
But he is married. His wife waits in the Dominican Republic. She never mentions their
dead son Enriquillo in her letters, which become more and more desperate as Ramón becomes
less and less responsive. Yasmin reads the letters. It is unclear whether Yasmin loves Ramón or
is more concerned with the stability he can provide, but her primary fear is that Ramón will leave
her for his wife—“I have not stopped watching for signs that he misses her” (67).
Eventually, finally, Ramón buys a house and Yasmin moves in with him. The letters have
stopped. She gets pregnant. Months later, a letter arrives. Yasmin wants to talk about it with her
friend Ana Iris, but instead, Ana Iris says that she has begun calling her three children back in the
D.R.—something they have never talked about. Ana Iris cries, and Yasmin holds her hand. That
night, Yasmin gives the letter to Ramón, and tries “to smile while he reads it” (76).
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2.5 “The Cheater’s Guide to Love”
This finale story spans six years. In “Year 0,” Yunior was engaged, but his fiancée stumbled
upon six years’ worth of emails documenting his infidelity with no less than fifty other women.
She stays with him for six months more out of habit. Year 0 is Yunior trying to fix it—holidays,
excuses, letters, purging of all other female contact—but it’s over. She’s gone. She never
reappears. Her character serves only as a “central absence” (Interview with Cressida Leyshon).
“You never see her again” (177).
Year 1. At first it’s denial and quasi-celebration, but then depression. At the end of it,
only his good friend Elvis and the fact that “you ain’t the killing-yourself type” stop him from
suicide. Year 2. He starts dating a nurse. But it ends when he expresses impatience at the lack of
sex. Year 3. He becomes obsessed about running but comes down with plantar fasciitis. Then
yoga, but his back gives out. He dates a Harvard Law student who’s “half your age, one of those
super geniuses who finished undergrad when she was nineteen and is seriously lovely” (189).
Year 4. Except the Harvard Law students breaks up with him to date someone her age,
but then months down the road, shows up on his doorstep and tells him that she’s pregnant with
his child. She moves in. She gives birth. It’s not his. She disappears. Elvis—who is married—
finds out he had a kid with another woman in the D.R. and they go to visit. Yunior suspects the
kid isn’t Elvis’ and presses for a paternity test. Year 5. It’s not Elvis’. Yunior revisits The
Doomsday Book, a compilation of all the evidence of his infidelity that his ex-fiancée had put
together. Elvis gives him an idea—“You really should write the cheater’s guide to love” (212).
Eventually, Yunior does. And on the last page of the book is the famous line: “The half-life of
love is forever” (213).
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3. Craft Analysis
3.1 Introduction
This Is How You Love Her is a metafictional work, in that Yunior de las Casas, the
narrator and protagonist, reveals at the end of the book that he is also the author. Therefore, as
detailed in Section 2.1, how Yunior develops as a character is the overarching story in every
episode, to the point that the book reads like “literature masquerading as autobiography, a
technique Díaz attributes to an unlikely influence, Philip Roth” (Kachka). The experiences that
Díaz and Yunior share are many, including the spinal stenosis, a brother who struggled with
cancer early on, and a father who paid meticulous attention to shoelaces.
That the stories are written in either first or second person sets up much of the
characterization, which then is accomplished by the crafting of language itself. Similarly,
elements such as sense of place depend on Yunior’s own perception and identification with his
environment. Each craft component is discussed in the order they were just mentioned, though
given their interdependence, it is difficult to discuss them perfectly mutually exclusively.
3.2 Point of View
All the stories are written in either first or second person. “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars”
and “Otravida, Otravez” are in first person, “Alma” and “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” in
second. Yunior is the understood author in all, even when he is not the narrator and protagonist
as in “Otravida, Otravez.” (On a side note, Díaz interestingly states that men “suck” at writing
from female perspectives, whereas “the average woman writes men just exceptionally well”
[Interview with Joe Fassler].)
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This particular point of view (i.e. Yunior as author) characterizes Yunior, apart from the
language, by his choice of content. That is, all the stories are intended by Yunior to be in his
book, so he has chosen what stories to include. This does not mean, however, that all his stories
were written in hindsight. In fact, all are in the present tense. Therefore, Yunior’s perspective,
that is Yunior as a character, changes and develops from story to story, along with the reader’s
understanding of him.
Consider the first line of the first story (“The Sun, the Moon, the Stars”): “I’m not a bad
guy” (3). Yunior says this in a wry, almost dismissive manner, and then admits to cheating. After
Magda does find out, his response is to cover it with a band aid in the form of a vacation—“What
couldn’t this cure?” he confidently thinks (8). At the resort, he thinks he’s done well, that “For
this I deserve something nice. Something physical” (13). When she brushes him off the next day,
he’s feeling sorry for himself. He’s “thinking over and over, I’m not a bad guy, I’m not a bad
guy” (22). When it dawns on him that they might not work out, his primary thought is “I’ll
probably never taste he chocha again” (23). In this first story, it’s apparent that he fails to truly
understand the consequences of his cheating on Magda; he expects her to simply get over it. But
in “Alma,” when Alma finds out he’s been unfaithful, his expectations are different: he
understands that “she will never forgive you” (47). Yet his “pelagic sadness” still is not sourced
by the hurt he has caused, but rather that he was caught, and that he’ll never enjoy her legs and
“her even more incredible pópola” (47) ever again.
But the Yunior that wrote “Otravida, Otravez” has matured. Díaz deems the story as
evidence of Yunior’s growing ability to humanize women; his attempt to imagine Yasmin’s life
is an “act of compassion, of sympathy he would never have been capable of at the beginning of
his journey” (Interview with Gina Frangello). And by “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” Yunior’s
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self-perception has completely flipped: “You are surprised at what a fucking chickenshit coward
you are. It kills you to admit it but it’s true. You are astounded by the depths of your mendacity”
(212). Instead of blaming the other party for not getting over it, he is able to admit to his exfiancée, “You did the right thing, negra. You did the right thing” (212). In Díaz’s words, the
Yunior “who says [‘I’m not a bad guy’] playfully, bullshitting, would be incapable of uttering
that line at the end” (Interview with Ross Scarano).
Such sharp changes in Yunior’s views were not accidental. Rather, Díaz “meant Yunior
to be more postmodern as a character—by which I mean someone that is not unified and
coherent and whole. For me it was okay if he seemed different from chapter to chapter”
(Interview with Gina Frangello). By employing first and second person and maintaining Yunior
as author, Díaz brought the reader right into the reality of the self-reflection. He made Yunior’s
thoughts and their evolution more accessible, more audible, more believable. But outside of
characterization, even Díaz himself doesn’t know quite why he needed second person—“maybe
simultaneous distance and cloying familiarity” (Interview with Joe Fassler).
3.3 Language, Dialogue, and Sense of Place
Since there are many characteristics to language, this section only adheres loosely to a
structure. Where they fit best, two tangents are made to discuss dialogue and sense of place.
As a by-product of first and second person, Díaz’s (or Yunior’s) language firstly is
conversational. From the kickoff, the language engages the reader almost like it was being told
over a bar counter after a few drinks, and even anticipates the reader’s reactions. “I’m not a bad
guy,” Yunior says. Then, as if the reader responds with an incredulous look, he follows up with,
“I know how that sounds—defensive, unscrupulous—but it’s true” (3). Sentences occasionally
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start with phrases that mimic dialogue, for example, on that very same page: “See, many months
ago[…]” and “The thing is, that particular[…]”. Any sentence could serve as example of that
conversational tone. For one, in “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” Díaz sets up the story with,
“Your girl catches you cheating. (Well, actually she’s your fiancée, but hey, in a bit it so won’t
matter.)” (176). The only place where there is a marked difference is in “Otravida, Otravez,”
which is expected given that the narrator is not Yunior. Instead, this narrator Yasmin sounds—
fittingly—jaded and passive, but still conversational, albeit with a hitch of a nonnative speaker:
Here is what the wife looks like. She is small with enormous hips and has the
grave seriousness of a woman who will be called doña before she’s forty. I
suspect if we were in the same life we would not be friends. (67)
For the entire book, given the conversational trait, the dialogue does not sound too
different from the rest of the prose. In fact, none of the dialogue is set off by quotation marks.
Nevertheless, what is being said or who is saying what is never confusing, which is a testament
to the strong, lively voices of the narrator and characters. One great example is in “The Pura
Principle,” in which Yunior’s cancer-stricken badass older brother Rafa disappears for a few
days and comes back drunk with his airheaded girlfriend Pura whom his mother does not
especially like.
Welcome home, Mami said quietly.
Check it out, Rafa said, holding out both his and Pura’s hands.
They had rings on.
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We got married!
It’s official, Pura said giddily, pulling the license from her purse.
My mother went from annoyed-relieved to utterly unreadable.
Is she pregnant? she asked.
Not yet, Pura said.
Is she pregnant? My mother looked straight at my brother.
No, Rafa said.
Let’s have a drink, my brother said.
My mother said: No one is drinking in my house.
I’m having a drink. My brother walked toward the kitchen by my mother stiffarmed him.
Ma, Rafa said.
No one is drinking in this house. She pushed Rafa back. If this—she threw her
hand in Pura’s direction—is how you want to spend the rest of your life, then
Rafael Urbano, I have nothing more to say to you. (106)
As for the prose, it speaks as Yunior would speak—with short, blunt sentences, profanity,
raw candidness, visceral metaphors, evidence of literary education, mixed languages, and
sardonic humor. Again, it’s paramount to understand Yunior as a character to understand his
language. Díaz describes Yunior—and thus his language—as “a disobedient child of New Jersey
and the Dominican Republic if that can be possibly imagined with way too much education”
(Interview with Shoshana Akabas), and “a Dominican immigrant with an absent father and a
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fluency in both Spanglish and nerdspeak [and] also has some serious issues with[…]‘masculinist
subjectivities’” (Kachka).
An example of the short, blunt, profanity-laced sentences is how Yunior depicts Magda
finding out about Cassandra: “Magda only found out because homegirl wrote her a fucking letter.
And the letter had details. Shit you wouldn’t even tell your boys drunk” (3). On the other hand,
especially in descriptions, each word brings tremendous mileage. Summer in Yunior words is:
“Hot white clouds stranded in the sky, cars being washed down with hoses, music allowed
outside” (7).
Often, Yunior relies on cultural references and stereotypes. Magda is “a Bergenline
original” (5); Alma is “one of those Sonic Youth comic-book-reading alternatinas without whom
you might never have lost your virginity” (46). It’s also apparent that Yunior is incredibly
observant, and has a knack for personifying people with a particular, revealing action (“The
Magda I knew was super courteous. Knocked on a door before she opened it.” [12]) and for
distilling social psychology (“Magda’s rocking a dope Ochun-colored bikini that her girls helped
her pick out so she could torture me” [15]; “Girls were starting to take notice of me; I wasn’t
good-looking but I listened and had boxing muscles in my arms” [37]).
The raw emotional honesty is perhaps best represented in the copious amounts of sexual
detail. The first paragraph about Alma features her ass. “Ain’t a day passes that you don’t want
to press your face against that ass or bite the delicate sliding tendons of her neck” (46). Yunior
doesn’t hold anything back. In the same story, he mentions how risqué Alma is in bed, for
instance when she’ll masturbate in front of him while talking dirty without letting him touch her,
then finish, and then wipe “her gummy fingers on your chest” (47).
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An epitome that combines both this unfiltered candidness and usage of visceral
metaphors is after Alma throws Yunior’s incriminating journal at him: “you pick up the journal
as one might hold a baby’s beshatted diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom”
(48). Other terse but vivid metaphors (and there are many) include: “Rafa’s hair was straight and
gilded through a comb like a Caribbean grandparent’s dream” (126), “But then the Letter hits
like a Star Trek grenade and detonates everything, past, present, future” (4), and “the cold
clamped down on my head like a slab of wet dirt” (128).
Yunior is a creative writing professor at MIT in the book (as Díaz is in real life)—and it
shows. He deploys high-end vocabulary seamlessly: for example, “A law he ultimately abrogated”
(158), “staring at you with lapidary intensity” (207), “You are astounded by the depths of your
mendacity” (212). And sometimes his diction is exquisitely choice: “fumbled through an
awkward fuck” (196), “shipwrecked by every kind of catastrophe” (153), “We were all bored
speechless” (123).
Spanish is peppered throughout the book, which is indicative of Yunior’s mixed
upbringing. This is just one way sense of place is rooted in the language. In “The Sun, the Moon,
the Stars,” when Santo Domingo first makes an real appearance (out of many), Yunior permits
one and a half pages of description and ends with, “Santo Domingo is Santo Domingo. Let’s
pretend like we all know what goes on there” (10). Even so, much can be learnt about life in the
Dominican Republic just by the Yunior’s experiences. When he visits with Elvis, “Of course
everybody has a sister or a prima they want you to meet. Que tan mas Buena que el Diablo, they
guarantee” (204).
On the other hand, the stories take place in immigrant communities in the U.S., and their
portrayal is not lacking either. Yasmin’s group of immigrant workers in “Otravida, Otravez”
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struggle with the cold winter in Jersey, something they’ve never experienced before. And in
“Miss Lora,” Yunior summarizes how the demographic of his neighborhood and the
socioeconomic statuses of different immigrant groups have shifted over time: “What happens is
that in the end [Miss Lora] moves away from London Terrace. Prices are going up. The Banglas
and the Pakistanis are moving in. A few years later your mother moves, too, up to the Bergenline”
(171).
Díaz in fact actively pursued to engrain such sense of place and mixture of cultures. He
“baked these tensions right into [Yunior’s] character,” tensions between blunt and brilliant,
“Dominican and urban BJ kid,” between “ghetto and grad school,” between “bruto macho and
perceptively sensitive,” between “immigrant and a native” (Interview with Gina Frangello).
Furthermore, the fact that some of the Spanish may escape his readers doesn’t hinder Díaz at the
slightest; it reassures him. He claims that such “unintelligibility” is basic to communication, and
that it mimics the experiences of immigrants who at first cannot process much of the
conversation around them (Interview with Dave Davies).
Yunior’s sardonic humor, though not critical to craft analysis and perhaps more telling of
his character, is entertaining enough that it deserves to be mentioned: “When she smiles niggers
ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets.” (16); “The men were
bachelors and divided their time between talking to Papi and eyeing Mami’s ass.” (139); “You
keep writing letters to her, waiting for the day that you can hand them to her. You also keep
fucking everything that moves.” (179); “[Elvis is] working for this ghetto-ass landlord and starts
taking you with him on collection day. It turns out you’re awesome backup. Deadbeats catch one
peep of your dismal grill and cough up their debts with a quickness.” (183); “You try riding a
bike, thinking you’ll turn into an Armstrong, but it kills your back.” (191); “Back at the
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apartment the law student has taken over two of your closets and almost your entire sink and
most crucially she has laid claim to the bed” (197).
4 Summation
As for any fiction writer, Díaz’s personal life determines his stories, but the degree of
how interwoven Díaz’s experiences are with his almost alter ego Yunior’s would be difficult to
parallel. Positing Yunior not only as narrator and protagonist but also as author allows a
powerful tool for characterization via the language and moreover the choice of stories included.
The embodiment of many tensions (such as short story collection versus novel) and the clear,
captivating prose makes This Is How You Lose Her a riveting read and a gratifying study.
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Works Cited
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Díaz, Junot. “Becoming a Writer.” The Oprah Magazine. Harpo, Inc. 2009. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Díaz, Junot. Interview with Anna Barnet. “Words on a Page: An Interview with Junot Díaz.” The
Harvard Advocate. Harvard College, 2009. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Díaz, Junot. Interview with Cressida Leyshon. “This Week in Fiction: Junot Díaz.” The New
Yorker. Condé Nast, 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Díaz, Junot. Interview with Dave Davies. “Interview: MacArthur ‘Genius’ Junot Diaz.” NPR.
NPR, 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Díaz, Junot. Interview with Gina Frangello. “The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Junot Díaz.” The
Rumpus. The Rumpus, 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Díaz, Junot. Interview with Joe Fassler. “‘The Baseline Is, You Suck’: Junot Diaz on Men Who
Write About Women.” The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 2012. Web. 15 Mar.
2014.
Díaz, Junot. Interview with Noah Charney. “Junot Díaz: How I Write.” The Daily Beast. The
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Díaz, Junot. Interview with Rebecca Elliott. “Fifteen Questions with Junot Díaz.” The Harvard
Crimson. The Harvard Crimson, Inc., 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
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Between Fact and Fiction, and What Scares Him Most.” Complex. Complex Media, 2012.
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Díaz, Junot. Interview with Sam Anderson. “Junot Díaz Hates Writing Short Stories.” The New
York Times. The New York Times, 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
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Díaz, Junot. Interview with Shoshana Akabas. “Q&A: Junot Diaz on writing, Yunior and books
that make him angry.” The Daily Pennsylvanian. The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc., 2012.
Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Díaz, Junot. Interview with Steve Inskeep. “Fidelity in Fiction: Junot Diaz Deconstructs a
Cheater.” NPR. NPR, 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Díaz, Junot. This Is How You Lose Her. New York: Riverhead, 2012. Print.
Hansen, Ron. “Book World: ‘This is How You Lose Her,’ by Junot Diaz.” The Washington Post.
The Washington Post Company, 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Kachka, Boris. “Junot Díaz’s Counterlife.” New York Magazine. New York Media LLC, 2012.
Web. 15 Mar. 2014.