Love, Dominican Style (Book Review: This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz)

Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," and when I read that book, I thought to myself yeah this is good but to quote Peggy Lee, is that all there is? I conceded that even though the book is not really my kind of thing, it kept my interest. So I was expecting "This Is How You Lose Her" to be good, but again, perhaps not for me. The fact that it is a short story collection helped because there wouldn't be much commitment, I thought. I loved almost all these stories. They are by and large connected: they are the tales of love of Yunior. Dominican, American and Jerseyan, Yunior has such a unique interesting voice that I kept wanting to more about him. And the stories are cohesive enough that you can tell they come from the same person, the same brain. Even though I casually some people of Dominican descent, I felt like I knew about their people, their culture, even the way they fall in love, based on the stories here. In a lot of ways, it felt like I was traveling - these stories taught a lot not just about a specific culture, but of life and love in general. 

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