In a recent issue of the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Leah Hager Cohen, the W.H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, reviewed Junot Diaz’s most recent collection of short stories, “This Is How You Lose Her.”
In her review, Cohen praises Diaz’s strong voice. “Junot Díaz writes in an idiom so electrifying and distinct it’s practically an act of aggression, at once alarming and enthralling, even erotic in its assertion of sudden intimacy,” she says. “His prose style is so irresistible, so sheerly entertaining,” she continues.
Cohen continues her examination of “This Is How You Loser Her” by noting that although the collection is billed as a book of love stories, Diaz is strongest when he writes about the complexity of human nature. “Diaz is most affecting when he’s writing about the inescapable undertow of family history and cultural mores, about the endless difficulty of loving oneself,” Cohen explains.
“Or maybe Díaz means to suggest that it’s human nature to be divided against ourselves, that we are all on some level conflicted, displaced creatures, making our way within the diaspora of the human heart.”
This ‘Holy Cross In the News” item by David Cotrone ’13.
