This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz

 

This is a snappy little read.  Junot Diaz has a punchy, witty writing style.  He is to literature what hip hop is to music.  This is How You Lose Her is a collection of interrelated short stores about American Dominican Republicans. 

Woven together by common characters, common themes and told in different voices, the stories give believable insight into the cultural nuances of Latinos and specifically Dominican's, living in America.  Diaz gives a voice to these (his) people and shines an important light on that fact that there is more to America than is often portrayed in popular culture/literature. 

Sometimes gritty and raw, sometimes passionate, touching and tragic the stories feel very real and you can't help but wonder if there is a bit of autobiographical material in there.  Diaz pays attention to the authenticity of his writing and so throws in a bit of street talk and slang in Spanish where English just wouldn't seem right.  It works artistically and linguistically...the fact that I can speak some Spanish is a bonus...but it might be annoying to an Anglophone reader.  I enjoyed this book a lot.