36 pages • 1 hour read
Junot DíazThis Is How You Lose Her
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Story 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 6 Summary: “The Pura Principle”
In “The Pura Principle,” Yunior is approximately 16 and struggling with his older brother Rafa’s cancer. To deal with her son’s sickness, their mother Mami takes to prayer. Yunior says, “She’d never been big on church before, but as soon as we landed on cancer planet she went so over-the-top Jesucristo that I think she would have nailed herself to a cross if she’d had one handy” (92).
Neither Yunior nor Mami can control the rebellious Rafa. Yunior explains, “Not a week out of the hospital, he cracked this illegal Peruvian kid in the face with a hammer and two hours later threw down at the Pathmark because he thought some fool was talking shit about him” (93).
Rafa gets attached to a Dominican girl, Pura, who recently immigrated to America. Amused by how agitated Mami is by Pura, Rafa elopes with the girl. Mami kicks him out of the house. Rafa returns and steals the TV and mattresses. Yunior, now finally stronger than his ailing brother, stops Rafa from stealing money. Rafa swears revenge against Yunior.
When Rafa falls ill again, Pura asks for money and then disappears. Once Rafa is finally home from the hospital, he never mentions Pura again. One day, Yunior is knocked unconscious while walking home. His assailant is Rafa, who threw a rock at his head from his window as payback. He tells Yunior, “Didn’t I tell you I was going to fix you? Didn’t I?” (118).
Story 6 Analysis
Yunior states, “In another universe I probably came out okay, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and along dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead” (38) Yunior struggles to support Mami and Rafa while watching his brother physically and mentally implode. Meanwhile, Rafa’s girlfriend Pura is insincere, and Rafa’s preference for her is never explained beyond her insincerity, his fragile, cancerous condition, his machismo, and his stubborn invidiousness. Rafa enjoys seeing Mami annoyed by Pura. His mother allows him to steal from her constantly because she loves him. Her allegiance to machismo means the boys are spoiled and have never had to cook or clean, as Yunior explains: “I didn’t lift a fucking finger in our apartment, male privilege baby” (101).
Rafa’s cruelty toward his mother and alignment with Pura is also ironic. Rafa, now ill with a terminal disease and unable to maintain the machismo that undergirds his personality, needs the matriarchal version of the female much more than he needs the sexualized Pura. Nonetheless, and perhaps exactly because of this need, Rafa does all he can to continue to continue to assert his hypermasculinity, which in turn hurts his family in figurative ways, such as via theft, and literal ways, such as hurling a rock at his brother.
Related Titles
By Junot Díaz
