Stereotypes In Diaz's This Is How You Lose Her

When biologists look to determine whether two organisms are of the same species, one of the things they often look for is whether or not these these organisms can mate and produce fertile offspring. If they can, then they are considered to be of the same species. Humans are no different; however, when it comes to the actual act of sex, so much more goes into it than the simple ability to produce offspring. Sex involves an attraction, a connection, a spark, and, as Diaz and Alexie point out, it also involves ethnicity. In Diaz and Alexie’s stories, ethnic identity and sexual desire are intimately related and one often times is portrayed as driving the other. In This is How You Lose Her, Diaz uses the ethnicities of the different female character, with whom Yunior interacts with, as an indicator of their sexual proclivity. For instance, in “Ms. Lora” Yunior describes his girlfriend Paloma as the only “Puerto Rican girl on the earth who wouldn’t give up the ass for any reason.” By doing so, Yunior is associating Paloma’s …show more content…
Yunior himself often times blames the fact that he is Dominican for his sexual propensity, and the women in his life do the same. For instance, Yunior’s college girlfriend, the one in which he confides his inappropriate relationship with Ms. Lora, asks his mom if she knew about the relationship between her son and La Professora to which she responds, “He’s just like his father and brother,” to which the girlfriend then responds matter-of-factly, “Dominican men, right, Doña?” Similar to the way Yunior stereotypes Puerto Rican women as being loose, the Dominican men in Diaz’s stories are stereotyped as being “sucios,” which loosely translates to dogs. Yunior even treats his sexual desire as a disease, often referring to it as the “gene,” which he hoped had skipped him. We see similar parallels between ethnic and sexual identity being drawn Alexie’s