This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Díaz

A linked collection of nine short stories, mostly narrated by Yunior, a Dominican-American man whose chronic infidelity costs him the women he loves, including his longtime love Magda and eventually his fiancée. One story breaks from his perspective to follow Yasmin, an immigrant woman entangled with a married man, giving a rare window into the women on the other side of Yunior's affairs. Woven throughout are stories of Yunior's brother Rafa's illness and his family's difficult immigration from the Dominican Republic to New Jersey, grounding the book's meditations on love and loss in a specific cultural and historical context.