Diaz and Dandicat Response

           After reading “Aurora,” I have even more of a desire to read more of Junot Diaz’s work. My Intro to Creative Writing professor at Pepperdine raved about This Is How You Lose Her, and even from this short story, I can see why. Here I really felt the power in speaking authentically, using the vernacular of a particular community, unflinchingly. In a lots of stories I read, I feel like the writer is just throwing slang out for effect, like putting on a mask of authenticity. Here, the slang phrases and the drug pseudonyms like “rocks” and “H” are fitting, and add both authenticity and humor. It isn’t necessary for the reader to understand the exact denotation of the words used; I don’t know what drug “H” is, but that doesn’t detract from my reading experience, because the message still comes through. 

Another technique for capturing the voice of the speaker is to keep the narration conversation, shown through the employment of sentence fragments, like on page 214: “Concrete with splotches of oil. A drain hole in the corner where we throw our cigs and condoms.” I love the beautiful irony in the speaker’s sometimes-love’s name: Aurora. It conjures the idea of someone ephemeral, appearing in and disappearing from the speaker’s life with a glow of light and life. It is something unable to be contained and captured, outside of one’s control. The speaker cannot pin her down, both because of her flighty and troubled life and his own misgivings. As such, each finds pleasure in hurting the other in their turn. This is a portrait of two complicated people caught and catching themselves in a savage love, at least from the speaker’s perspective. 

In “Night Women,” the speaker revels in the innocence of her son sleeping, as contrasted with the night time activity she is forced to perform to provide for him. What makes the voice of the narrator eerily distinct is the way she seems to sexualize him in her descriptions of him. No mother would describe her young son’s moans in sleep like “he’s already discovered that there is pleasure in touching himself,” nor their relationship like that of “faraway lovers, lying to one another, under different moons.” However, given both the speaker’s profession and her fierce love for her son, we can understand the eerie juxtaposition of innocence and adult knowledge.