Junot Diaz Really, Really Loves His Latinas: Is There Anyone Writing With Equal Affection and Desire For Black Women?

Oh, hello. I’d like to introduce you to someone. Reader, this is Nilda. Oh man, Nilda is something. She’s Dominican, and has super-long hair, like those Pentecostal girls, and a chest you wouldn’t believe—I’m talking world-class. She’s nice, right? Or, like, have you met Alma? She has a long tender horse neck and a big Dominican ass that seems to exist in a fourth dimension beyond jeans. And oh shit don’t even get me started on Magda, with the big mouth and big hips and dark curly hair you could lose a hand in.

These are just a few of the fine, fine women who date Yunior, the hero of Junot Díaz’s excellent new collection of stories, This Is How You Lose Her. 

Some more Junot Diaz, our founding "ghetto nerd," for you. With the release of his newest book, Diaz really is getting some much well-deserved shine.

Dude loves his Latinas. As a fellow traveler, I love all women. As such, I am a great advocate for race-mixing as my trips to space mountain involve vigorous--and often (whenever possible)--explorations across the color line. I love black women; as Big Pun said, I regulate every shade; but I also have a particular fondness for women from the Iberian peninsula.

If I am a tourist in such appreciation and lustful moments of hedonistic consumption(s) of the human ambrosia that is the female form, Diaz is the master.   

Fittingly, Slate has a piece dedicated to Junot Diaz's apparently incomparable wit and finely honed ability to describe the various varieties, subtleties, and types of Hispanic-Latina beauty. There Dan Kois writes:

Díaz’s commercial breakthrough, Oscar Wao, was also his breakthrough in lady-describing. Look no further than page 13, where a neighbor of seven-year-old Oscar is described thus: “Mari Colón, a thirty-something postal employee who wore red on her lips and walked like she had a bell for an ass.” Oh, my. Sit back for a moment and admire that sentence, the way you might otherwise sit back and admire the ass in question.

Five pages later, we meet the first girl who dumps Oscar, Maritza. Oscar never forgives himself for that one. “A ghetto Mary Jane, hair as black and lush as a thunderhead, probably the only Peruvian girl on the planet with pelo curlier than his sister’s ... body fine enough to make old men forget their infirmities, and from the sixth grade on dating men two, three times her age.” Like once-awkward Maritza, a newly confident Díaz is parading his talents in front of us, daring us to stare.

How wonderfully voyeuristic. It may just be prose on a virtual screen, but such imagery--and how it reminds me of a certain Puerto Rican sister from back in the day--makes a certain part of the anatomy lift like a lead pipe with wings aided by an anti-grav field.

As is true with such things, I do not know if it is just the thought of her that is so exciting these years later, or the memory of the fact that I enjoyed the attention of a queen--one who inspired dudes to have the "how the hell did he get her face?"--and had partaken of her many times and in many ways.

I am getting the vapors. Please let me compose myself for a moment.

The fantasy was a reality. It is rare that such dreams come true...and do not disappoint. But I digress.

Potentially onanistic, self-abuse inspiring tours of one's mental Rolodex of sexual and sensual experiences is fun, a healthy diversion.

But, I have a serious question.

Are there any mainstream authors as popular as Junot Diaz who are writing with such passion, desire, worshipful lust, and affection about black women?