Ms. Hen reviews This is How you Lose Her

 

This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Diaz

Riverhead Books

2012

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she found it at a Little Free Library near where she lives. She met the author many years ago at an event, and found him incredibly unpleasant, and difficult to converse with. (One of Ms. Hen's friends said he was coked up. Ms. Hen isn't knowledgable of such things, so she took his word for it.) Ms. Hen was turned off by interacting with him, and has not read anything by this author since then.

But this year she watched the film TAR, starring Cate Blanchett, and a scene in the film stuck with her, in which the character was teaching a class, and gave a lecture to a student about not judging the art by the artist. She was talking about Bach, but Ms. Hen has had this discussion with other creative people. It's different if someone is talking about Bach or Picasso, or any other offensive individual who has passed on, but if we talk about someone who is alive, are we right to judge the art by the artist? Ms. Hen hesitantly decided to give this author another chance.

This collection of short stories is about different characters who are from the Dominican Republic, men and women who are trying to make it in the United States. They are poor, but hard workers, and have strict ideas about how the world should be. A few stories circle around a character named Yunior at different times in his life. His brother dies from cancer in one story, and another takes place when he and his brother and mother move to New Jersey to live with their father, who had lived there for several years.

Ms. Hen thinks that the male characters in this book are misogynist and objectify women's bodies. She found it offensive how the men talk about women, but she believes this is a realistic portrayal of how these characters would act. All the men cheat on their wives and girlfriends. It's difficult for Ms. Hen to have sympathy for men who are such philanderers.

Ms. Hen did not start reading this collection of short stories with the idea that she would be disgusted with it, and she was hoping for a different feeling when she finished. Should art be judged by the artist? Ms. Hen does not want to think this is true, but she can't help feeling that she wasted her time reading this.