In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, this week’s staff pick is from the Dominican American writer Junot Diaz. Diaz, who grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers University, is a talented and unforgettable writer. This Is How You Lose Her features nine short stories about the ups and downs of life, family and love. A National Book Award finalist, these stories are passionate, funny, smart and will have you both laughing and crying.
“Díaz turns his remarkable talent to the haunting, impossible power of love – obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness–and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own. In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in the New York Times-Bestselling This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”” —Amazon
Be sure to check out our current book displays in the gallery and teen room for more great Hispanic literature!
