“The half-life of love is forever.”
— "The Cheater's Guide To Love"
Junot Díaz (December 31, 1968) is a Dominican-American writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008 for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and a Mac Arthur Fellowship Genius Grant in 2012. He's also known for his short story collections Drown and This is How You Lose Her, both of which center around his Author Avatar Yunior de Las Casas, who is also featured in his novel.
Junot Díaz's works provide examples of:
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Zig-zagged with Rafa. Díaz graphically describes the effects of cancer and radiation therapy on his body, but he continues to attract a slew of hot women.
- The Casanova: Yunior's father and brother, even as he's dying of cancer. Yunior Really Gets Around as well, but his tendency to get in his own way makes him more of a Casanova Wannabe compared to them.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Yunior asks The Law Student if she's "keeping" her baby, she shoots back "Of course I’m keeping it."
- Paloma, Yunior's girlfriend in high school, refuses to have sex with Yunior because she anticipates if she gets pregnant she'll want to keep it and her life will be ruined.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: A common complaint among "halfie" girls according to "How to Date A Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)."
- Latin Lover: Deconstructed frequently in his work. "How to Date A Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)" breaks down the narrator's seduction methods ("She’ll say, I like Spanish guys, and even though you’ve never been to Spain, say, I like you. You’ll sound smooth.") but acknowledges at the end they don't always work.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: The Law Student shows up pregnant at Yunior's apartment, insisting the baby's his and not her Kenyan boyfriend. She then kicks Yunior out of the birthing room, yelling he's not the father. The paternity of the baby remains ambiguous.
- Mrs. Robinson: The titular lady in "Miss Lora," Yunior's middle-aged neighbor who seduces him while he's in high school.
- The One That Got Away: "The Cheater's Guide to Love" begins with Yunior's fiancée Lola dumping him after learning about his multiple affairs. For the next five years, he struggles to get over her. He ultimately learns that's impossible (see the page quote), but he can turn his heartbreak into art.
- Second-Person Narration: A common technique in his short stories, the "You" usually referring to Yunior.
- Signature Style: Tossing in Spanish words, phrases, and slang without defining them for the reader.
- Spicy Latina: To quote this Slate article
, "Díaz is so unbelievably excellent at describing sexy Latinas." - Workout Fanservice: Why Elvis urges Yunior to take yoga classes.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Yunior is offended that The Law Student's friend would ask him "You're not going to go psycho on me, are you?" when she comes to pick up The Law Student's things. He claims "I've never hurt a woman in my life." Played for laughs afterwards, when it occurs to him that he sounds "like a dude who hurts women all the time."
