Yunior, bookish, bright, but prone to dope-smoking and apocalyptic nightmares, has regular girlfriends, some of whom he's smitten by – the chic-geeks, "alternatinas", and Latinas. He learns his trade in womanising young, from his father, who takes him along on his "pussy runs", and his older brother, Rafa, a handsome tearaway who will die prematurely of cancer after sleeping with half the New Jersey female population. Though not set in strict chronological order, the stories span Yunior's life from childhood through to middle age. Infidelity, cultural typing, family and emigrant dynamics recur and reconfigure throughout. The story acts as a primer for the collection. "I'm like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes …" But Yunior can't recognise the end of the relationship, nor his culpability. The couple go on holiday to the Dominican Republic, abandoning Yunior's relatives in the dusty countryside for an exclusive coastal resort, where everything finally breaks down. Yunior contorts himself into positions of penitence, but Magdalena withdraws. Why didn't he just deny it, his friends ask. Magda calls him "a typical Dominican man, a sucio, an asshole".
She finds out, via a helpfully detailed letter – "shit you wouldn't even tell your boys drunk" – sent to her by the other woman. I n "The Sun, the Moon, the Stars", the first story in a new collection by Junot Díaz, the author's serial narrator, Yunior, a young Dominican-American, cheats on his girlfriend Magdalena.
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