Let me just start by saying that Junot Diaz is really important to me. I have a long list of favorite authors and favorite books, and he is very high up on both of those lists.
Two years ago, I wrote a short story unlike anything I've ever written. I won't call it great, because I don't know if it is or not. I wont even call it the best thing I've written, because I don't know how to judge these things. But it is my favorite piece of all the stories I've ever written. I had just finished reading This Is How You Lose Her, one of many works I devoured that summer, ravenous after years of required readings and ignoring my own long list of stories I really wanted to enjoy. That summer, I remember by the books. I remember Father's Day, nestled on the couches of two of my grandfathers' homes, zen noise app playing sinister chimes as I worked back through the Giver series. I remember sitting, dehydrated and ill in the backseat of my mother's car, unwilling to get out or get a drink of water or get some fresh air until I finished the next chapter - No, now the next chapter - No the, fine, I'll get out but I'm reading it as I walk. The summer was filled with stories that I held as if they were the blood in my veins, tracing the spines like they were alive. They felt so alive. This Is How You Lose Her was the first book I read that summer. I saw a photo of the cover once online, thought it was poetic and tragic and lovely looking. Two weeks later I came across the following quote:
But I get carried away. The moment the book was ending, when I felt the stack of pages growing thinner by the minute, I let the writing carry me away. I closed it after the last page, set it down and grabbed my laptop. And I wrote. I wrote with reckless abandon. I wrote with a full head and a full heart. I wrote as if it was breathing. I hardly knew I was doing it, but I knew I had to. At ten pages, I found myself happy with an end. I had characters I loved and characters I hated and words I loved and something I was proud of. I've had two professors give me feedback on it, and no one's said it sucked yet, so I'm hopeful I got something right with this one.
I digress. Junot Diaz is one of my favorites. He writes beautiful and insightful stories that I can't break away from. This story is no exception. It features Yunior as the story's voice, the same Yunior I learned to love in This Is How You Lose Her, revealing pieces of himself from within his dysfunctional relationships. The voice is incredibily strong - perhaps that is why I am so enamored with these stories. Yunior's language brings Spanish, slang, and unique colloquialisms that somehow are incredibly particular but work with ease. Reading This Is How You Lose Her exposed me to this in higher frequency and intensity, and I was stunned by it. Speaking both English and Spanish - albeit, the latter only semi-fluently - I found myself weaving between the languages freely, without any hinderance, not even realizing these switches until I looked back later, quoting it to a friend and realized she didn't fully understand some of the sentences I read to her, even though she found them as lovely as I had. But I think that speaks to the way Diaz writes, that he creates a character that is so rooted in his culture and community, but still universal that anyone can read him and form a firm image of his characters.
Plus, Diaz is a master of second person, something I've always found incredibly beautiful. I can't read Diaz without wanting desperately to write my own masterpiece. I love his work, not necessarily because his style or characters are things I want to emulate in my own works, but because he captures life and beauty and pain and everything about our world in his words and it's poetry and magic and something I can't put words to. I mean, I might be biased, but it's hard not to want to write, to want to make something beautiful, when I read his work.
So, you could say I kinda liked this story, I guess.
Two years ago, I wrote a short story unlike anything I've ever written. I won't call it great, because I don't know if it is or not. I wont even call it the best thing I've written, because I don't know how to judge these things. But it is my favorite piece of all the stories I've ever written. I had just finished reading This Is How You Lose Her, one of many works I devoured that summer, ravenous after years of required readings and ignoring my own long list of stories I really wanted to enjoy. That summer, I remember by the books. I remember Father's Day, nestled on the couches of two of my grandfathers' homes, zen noise app playing sinister chimes as I worked back through the Giver series. I remember sitting, dehydrated and ill in the backseat of my mother's car, unwilling to get out or get a drink of water or get some fresh air until I finished the next chapter - No, now the next chapter - No the, fine, I'll get out but I'm reading it as I walk. The summer was filled with stories that I held as if they were the blood in my veins, tracing the spines like they were alive. They felt so alive. This Is How You Lose Her was the first book I read that summer. I saw a photo of the cover once online, thought it was poetic and tragic and lovely looking. Two weeks later I came across the following quote:
“Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might hold a baby's beshatted diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.”I was hooked. I got the collection the moment the opportunity presented itself. I did not take my eyes off the page, even when I was coming off as rude or anti-social. I couldn't pull myself out of the stories if I tried. And it killed me, because the character was the last person I ever would've imagined myself rooting for and I still did and I loved Diaz the more for it.
But I get carried away. The moment the book was ending, when I felt the stack of pages growing thinner by the minute, I let the writing carry me away. I closed it after the last page, set it down and grabbed my laptop. And I wrote. I wrote with reckless abandon. I wrote with a full head and a full heart. I wrote as if it was breathing. I hardly knew I was doing it, but I knew I had to. At ten pages, I found myself happy with an end. I had characters I loved and characters I hated and words I loved and something I was proud of. I've had two professors give me feedback on it, and no one's said it sucked yet, so I'm hopeful I got something right with this one.
I digress. Junot Diaz is one of my favorites. He writes beautiful and insightful stories that I can't break away from. This story is no exception. It features Yunior as the story's voice, the same Yunior I learned to love in This Is How You Lose Her, revealing pieces of himself from within his dysfunctional relationships. The voice is incredibily strong - perhaps that is why I am so enamored with these stories. Yunior's language brings Spanish, slang, and unique colloquialisms that somehow are incredibly particular but work with ease. Reading This Is How You Lose Her exposed me to this in higher frequency and intensity, and I was stunned by it. Speaking both English and Spanish - albeit, the latter only semi-fluently - I found myself weaving between the languages freely, without any hinderance, not even realizing these switches until I looked back later, quoting it to a friend and realized she didn't fully understand some of the sentences I read to her, even though she found them as lovely as I had. But I think that speaks to the way Diaz writes, that he creates a character that is so rooted in his culture and community, but still universal that anyone can read him and form a firm image of his characters.
Plus, Diaz is a master of second person, something I've always found incredibly beautiful. I can't read Diaz without wanting desperately to write my own masterpiece. I love his work, not necessarily because his style or characters are things I want to emulate in my own works, but because he captures life and beauty and pain and everything about our world in his words and it's poetry and magic and something I can't put words to. I mean, I might be biased, but it's hard not to want to write, to want to make something beautiful, when I read his work.
So, you could say I kinda liked this story, I guess.
Your enthusiasm for Diaz is brilliant!
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