Many critics have praised Julia Alvarez's sensitive and adept portrait of a family's struggle with assimilation in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. Donna Rifkind, in the New York Times Book Review, wrote that Alvarez "beautifully captured the threshold experiences of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory and the future remains an anxious dream." Jason Zappe noted in the American Review that "Alvarez speaks for many families and brings to light the challenges faced by many immigrants. She shows how the tensions of successes and failures don't have to tear families apart." Some critics, however, find fault with the novel's narrative structure. In an article published in Commonweal, Ilan Stavan considered the novel "imperfect and at times unbalanced." Elizabeth Starcevic, in the American Book Review, determined the book to be "uneven," arguing that "its organization into individual stories highlights this. The author has not really found consistently developed voices." Alvarez in fact does present only fragmented voices in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. This structural fragmentation, however, skillfully reinforces the novel's main point — that the difficult process of acculturation can result in feelings of dislocation and a fragmented sense of self.
This is an introduction to a literary criticism written by Wendy Perkins, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1999. Wendy Perkins, an Associate Professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, has published articles on several twentieth-century authors. In this essay she argues that Alvarez's effective structuring of the stories in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents reinforces the novel's focus on the problems inherent in the immigrant experience.
This is an introduction to a literary criticism written by Wendy Perkins, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1999. Wendy Perkins, an Associate Professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, has published articles on several twentieth-century authors. In this essay she argues that Alvarez's effective structuring of the stories in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents reinforces the novel's focus on the problems inherent in the immigrant experience.
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In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, Alvarez shows that women have an inner longing for being wanted and they want this love so much when they have it they are blinded and thus put up with arduous situations. When Yolanda, the second youngest of the Garcia girl, remembers her early relationship with John she says, “In the beginning, we were in love. That was a good beginning”(Alvarez 70) but quickly they grew from in love and never fighting to John screaming “What you need is a goddam shrink!”(Alvarez 73). An insult, screaming, pushing for what Yolanda wasn’t comfortable with, but still she tolerated, why? She loved not John but the feeling of being special, of being John’s girl. So even with John’s cruel words and fear of him, Yolanda would rather be his girl then no ones girl. This putting up with rough situations is prevalent in another Garcia girls life. Fifi begins dating Manuel, a handsome cousin of hers, and from close up it seems like the perfect relationship, Fifi is happy and has a great boyfriend. But the narrator says “We [the other sisters] begin to get the long view, and it’s not so pretty. Lovable Manuel is quite the tyrant, a mini papi and mami rolled into one. Fifi can’t wear pants in public. Fifi can’t talk to another man. Fifi can’t leave the house without his permission. And what’s most disturbing is that Fifi, feisty, lively Fifi, is letting this man tell her what she can and cannot do”(Alvarez 120) Fifi has always been a girl who did what she wanted. She was brave and was her own person, but as soon as she got a man in her life everything changed. She did what he said so she could be Manuel girlfriend.
This longing to be wanted is also shown in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Janie has a terrible first marriage filled with abuse labor and cruel words so when Joe Starks, a smooth handsome man, meets Janie she begins to fall for him. She runs away with him to a town where he is mayor. And after initially falling for him Janie isn’t in love. She is not allowed to this. She must do as John says. She is his slave yet she stays with him until death. Why? She was drilled with the idea she needed a man. Because of that same style of thinking women for generations after Janie’s time thought the same way. And in some ways so do women today. They want to be able to have a husband, to be married, and since they want this so much they often are not careful with who they fall for and thus get hurt.
In the novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the four Garica sisters are forced to flee their home country, the Dominican Republic, and immigrate to the United States. Each of the sisters deals with adjusting to American life. Each member of the Garcia family tries to fit in, and “Americanize” themselves. After she has grown up, Yolanda, one of the four Garcia sisters returns to the homeland, the Dominican Republic. She goes to the Dominican Republic in an attempt to embrace her cultural roots and to get in touch with her family. However, she finds that she has grown apart from the Dominican Republic, and has trouble re-connecting, because she has become so used to American ideals and cultures. Yolanda’s quest to bring back her childhood and get in touch with the island she used to call her home is represented by her search for guavas. She craves for the guava fruit in the same way she craves reconnection with her childhood memories, and the way she desires to feel as if she belongs on the island. Her search for guavas symbolize her search to reconnect with the Dominican Republic, and to connect with herself.
When the Garcias were forced to flee their homeland and immigrate to the US, they struggled with fitting in. By trying to “Americanize” themselves, they become divulged in a country full of different values, languages, and cultures. The Dominican Republic becomes more and more distant to them the longer they live in the United States. As the girls try to fit into the United States, they lose their accents, along with their cultural roots. When Yolanda returns to the Dominican Republic, she feels as if she is more American than Dominican, and has trouble adjusting to the Dominican lifestyle. Her search for guavas symbolizes her attempt to get in touch with her roots, and cultural upbringing. The search for fruit brings her back upon many memories of times with her family, both in the states and on the island. I think her search for the guavas helps Yolanda realize that she is both an American woman and a Dominican woman, because she will never lose her roots and cultural upbringing, even if she strays from her home country’s traditions and ideals. Her struggle to go back to her roots is resolved, because she can now define herself as a Dominican-American woman, and she never loses her heritage, but can also embrace new ideals and cultures.
Going back throughout “the four girls” Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia’s lives, “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” is an amazing book that really shows you how your family relationships can bring you through in a tough situation. Back in their home in the Dominican Republic, being a family unit was an extremely part of their culture. All of the extended family lived on the same lot of land, and were always there for each other. When the Garcias move to New York City, they become an even stronger family, because that is all that they have. This strong bond is displayed particularly between the four daughters. Since they are all so close in age, they are able to share everything about their lives with one another. On the occasions where the sisters are all home from school at the same time, they share every detail of what has been going on, which displays their true bonds as sisters. This helps them to adjust to their new lives in the United States, because they are able to express how they have become more American. The girls always stand up for each other and cover each other. For example, when the Garcias’ maid finds the bag of weed behind the girls’ bookcase after they have left to visit the family in the Dominican Republic, Fifi takes all of the blame for her sisters. She did this to keep her sisters from being punished, even though they all had at least a little something to do with it. All throughout this novel, you see how the relationships of the family grow and strengthen, which helps to tie together the plot, and make this such an excellent read.
The United States of America is a country that was generated by immigrants; however, in recent years immigrants have been rejected by the "natives". In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, the Garcia family is constantly taunted for being of Dominican heritage. This ridicule demonstrates the hypocrisy of modern American society. For example, Carla is constantly bullied at her school because of her appearance and her ways. The other children "pelt Carla with stones" (Alvarez 153) and jeer at her by yelling awful remarks such as "Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic" (Alvarez 53). How can someone who is a direct descendant of an immigrant act so viciously upon a new immigrant? These children display hypocrisy by expressing that it is acceptable for their ancestors to be immigrants, yet it is intolerable for a new people to enter "their" country. Furthermore, even older, "wiser" people reject the Garcias instantly. The older woman that lives below the Garcias, nicknamed by the family "La Bruja", "had been complaining to the super since the day the family moved in a few months ago. The Garcias should be evicted" (Alvarez 170). This vile woman's reasons for justifying throwing the Garcias onto the streets were that "Their food smelled." and They spoke...not in English" (Alvarez 170). These "reasons" are simply aspects of another culture that closed-minded Americans chose to treat as unlawful crimes. This is a paragon of displaying hypocrisy because our shared country is a melting pot of different cultures. Since the birth of this land it has been flooded with immigrants who bring along their ways, and that is the best part of this country. The United States has no owner and prides itself on its "open arms to all",but the attitude of the citizens could not be more conflicting. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is a paragon of the hypocrisy inside the American soul.
A clear theme in “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez is language. More specifically, Yolanda’s relationship with language stands out. After she goes insane, she allows herself to reconnect with words and their meanings. Before her stay in the mental hospital, she lost touch with language and her English was meaningless. She even develops an allergy to words like “love”. When she spoke the word “love”, not only did she not know what it meant, but “her face [was] one itchy valentine…[and made] a rash erupt on the backs of her hands” [Alvarez 85]. Trying to get over this allergy, “the words tumble out, making a sound like the rumble of distant thunder, taking shape, depth, and substance…there is no end to what can be said about the world” [Alvarez 85]. Yolanda finally realizes that she has a limitless vocabulary and is able to communicate effectively. Her ability to use language evidently changes throughout the novel, and ultimately affects others around her. The moment when she reclaims the meaning of words is the beginning of her recovery of her mental breakdown, which is an immense turning point in her life. This allows her to communicate with her loved ones and others.
The tie between two diverse cultures builds confusion in the search for identity. In Julia Alvarez’s novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the Garcia family’s immigration from the dictator-ruled Dominican Republic to the free United States leaves them torn between their past familiar identities and their new alien home. Yolanda, the third oldest Garcia daughter, exemplifies this struggle of facing confusion between her new American culture and discovering her identity. The nicknames she is given creates even more uncertainty for the young adult: Yo, Yoyo, and Joe. Her Dominican Republic name, Yolanda, clashes with her new Americanized name, Joe, given to her by one of her lovers. When she was leaving this crazed lover, she wrote, “I’m needing some space, some time, until my head-slash-heart-slash-soul-”(Alvarez, 77), but then erases what she wrote because “she didn’t want to divide herself anymore, three persons in one Yo, (Alvarez, 77) connecting back to how all of her names reflect on her culture.
Yolanda also befriends another lover in previous relationships where she is torn between her culture and her identity. Her strong feelings for wanting to remain a virgin, connecting to her Catholicism and Hispanic culture, leaves her confused in her relationship. She desires to stay with this spontaneous and fun boyfriend, but she is stuck between her past ways of life and her new, unfamiliar, easy-going way. Confused, she stuck with her old ways but later in time, when they met again, the lover found that the once-uptight Yolanda had become Americanized, and a whole new identity had developed. And that modernization had become the victor in Yolanda’s internal battle of cultures.
In the late 1800s, the United States became a place of destination. Immigrants from all over, who have different cultures and backgrounds, poured into the United States during this time. The Garcia family was forced to leave their home country and come to the United States. They soon learned that their culture and background were extremely different of the Americans and that it was going to affect their identity. Julia Alvarez, captured the differences in these two cultures and how it affected the sisters perfectly through her novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
The Garcia girls grew up in the Dominican Republic. One major difference in the two cultures was the language. The native language of the Dominican Republic was Spanish, and English was the native language of the United States. The sisters were immediately grouped as outsiders who could not speak the language of the United States. This difference caused the girls to have special treatment in school. They had to be apart from the rest of the class so the teacher can teach them new words in English. Their identity was already affected because of their native tongue. The Garcia girl’s background also affected their identity. Being of Spanish roots, they had darker skin and darker hair. They may have been beautiful in their home country but in the United States they were considered different, and were picked on. “Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic,” (Alvarez 153). The sisters all became dirty spics. Their identity was once again determined by their culture and background. Another difference in the two cultures that affected the girls was family bonds. In the Dominican they grew up with very tight family bonds. In the United States some people believed in strong family bonds but most did not care. While some girls were out with friends the Garcia girls were having a family dinner, this set them apart from the Americans. The differences in culture and background made the natives reject the Garcia girls. They had labels put on them because of where they came from and their roots. In the end this affected their lives but mostly their identities in the new world.
In the novel “How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” Julia Alvarez illustrates through her characters, the idea that no matter how much you try to adapt, acclimate, or try to fit into another culture, you cannot deny your true nature or your love for your home. It is better to take on another identity rather than sacrifice a piece of yourself.
The story of the 4 sisters and their family is told in reverse, perhaps symbolizing the idea of returning home, where their story started. The book switches points of view, making it possible for the sisters and the rest of the family, to give their opinions or express their feelings. The story also highlights the conflicts faced by immigrant parents, who want to preserve their heritage but realize that their children must be Americanized to succeed. Laura, the mother embraces American culture and freedoms. She says she would rather be “an independent nobody” in the states, rather than a “high-class house slave” back in the Dominican Republic (144). Carlos, the father, is set in the old ways of Dominican culture, and categorically refuses to learn English. Whenever one of his daughters shows the slightest sign of Americanization, such as straightening their hair, wearing makeup or questioning authority, he demands that they act more like an average Dominican woman.
At first, for all four sisters, life in the United States was a difficult adjustment. They had left the Dominican Republic in a hurry, and what they had left behind was a life of privilege, beauty, and wealth. During their college years, they grew to love the United States, but had difficulties with their dual identities. They were now Dominican-Americans, and they struggled to understand this. Were they half and half? Or did they have two separate and equal identities? They would go back and forth between feeling Dominican, and acting American, and vice versa. Each sister expressed this struggle in her own way.
Yolanda for example, is the tomboy of the family and had many issues with love and relationships with men because she wanted to save herself for marriage as is the Dominican custom. She even had a physical reaction, a bothersome rash, just at the mention of the word “love.” Carla felt out of place in the States because of physical and sexual abuse from schoolboys, and likewise, encountering a child molester she met on her way home from her school. In the Dominican Republic, a woman would be treated with respect and honor. Sandra questioned the idea of American morals after seeing a drunken woman kiss her father. However, she so wanted to fit the American form of beauty, that she almost starved herself to death. She desperately wanted to be thin and model-like. Sofia however, was able to find her sexual independence in America. At one point in her life, she was never without a boyfriend. She defied the old Dominican culture by running off with a German man.
At first, the four girls missed their homeland, but afterwards, they dreaded their summers back at home. As adult women, the four daughters recognized that sometimes you have to leave your homeland in order to appreciate it and understand its virtues. Yolanda, the poet, returned home more comfortable in the skin of an American woman rather than a Dominican immigrant. Carla was able to deal with her problems later in life by becoming a psychologist after being harassed and nearly molested in the States. Sandra returned home with a better understanding of her identity after having a breakdown in the States. Sofia, returned home with and reconciled the rocky and uncomfortable relationship with her father.
When an immigrant arrives in the United States, almost instantly a hyphen becomes part of their identity, for example, Dominican becomes Dominican-American. In some cases, the hyphen means that the person must give up part of themselves, so they can acclimate, adapt or become American. The four girls lost their accents, but never gave up their individuality and ethnicity.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents had the theme of family relationships constantly appearing throughout the novel. The family was forced to leave the Dominican Republic As the girls, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia, got older, they slowly drifted away from the family. Sofia becomes very rebellious at one point and she ends up leaving home, which leaves her sisters in distress. Yolanda has issues with her husband, who is always yelling at her and mistreating her. The four daughters move to the United States really Americanized them and really pulled them away from their family back in the Dominican Republic.
There is one prominent theme in “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez, which is language. This novel displays the lifestyle of four Hispanic women, Yolanda, Carla, Sofia, and Sandra, and their parents. Each connects their language with their identities. The members of the Garcia family express their language in a different way. Yolanda’s articulate speaking reflects on her personality because this shows she is trying to be more sophisticated than the rest of her family and wants to act higher class than them. Sandra thought language was her strongest connection to humanity, and during her period of psychotic episodes she felt like she was not part of the human race without preserving their language first. Therefore she wouldn’t put down any book she read. The mother explains that Sandra “told us why she couldn’t stop reading. She didn’t have much time left. She had to read all the great works of man first because soon she wouldn’t be human” (Alvarez 54). Carla grew up with a bad experience with English, which was emotionally scarring. She was flashed by a man in a car, and could not speak to the police directly due to her poor English. Language is proven to have a separate meaning for each family member and this novel describes how each of their stories connects to their Spanish-American lifestyle.
When two family members develop a strain in their relationship, it causes the remaining family to drift apart. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, Sofia rebels against her father’s dictatorship, which leads him to disown her from the family. Although in later years she tries to mend their relationship, her father remains unforgiving.
When two family members develop tension, opinions are formed about one another - these opinions influence the rest of the family to take sides in the situation. Although Mami never had a direct problem with Sofia, she adopted the same mindset of Papi. He is embarrassed by his daughter and feels that he should ignore her presence in the family, hoping that she will feel the appropriate shame for her mistake of sleeping with a man before married. Mami sides with Papi and overlooks Sofia- “your sister wanted some new sneakers. She drove me crazy night and day, she wanted sneakers, she wanted sneakers. Anyhow, we couldn’t afford to make any ends, no less start in with sneakers! If you girls only knew what we went through in those days. Words can’t describe it. Four- no, three of you, back then- three girls, and no money coming in,” (43). Not only did she neglect Sofia, but she specifically recognized the other daughters as being her only three children.
Sofia, being the youngest daughter, has a strong sence of her independence. She recognizes that her father does not want his daughters to be strong, American individuals. He wants them to be traditional Dominican women, with little independence from him. When Sofia moves out of her house, she is proving to her father and sisters that she is independent and does not need her father controlling her life. This was the beginning to a new kind of family struggle - Carla, Sandra, and Yolanda must cope with their beloved sister leaving the house and having their family bonds slowly drift apart.
-catherine murphy
In the novel How The Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, Julia Alvarez describes complications with learning to live in completely new surroundings and circumstances. At a certain point in the story, Alvarez mentions a monkey experiment that Carla read about in a psych class of hers. “These baby monkeys were kept in a cage so long, they wouldn’t come out when the doors were finally left open. Instead they stayed inside and poked their arms through the bars for their food, just out of reach.” (Alvarez 131) This passage strongly relates back to the stories of the Garcia family, especially the character of Yolanda. In a scenario involving Rudy Elmenhurst, Yolanda is pressured to give into his demands to have sex with him. Here, she herself symbolizes the baby monkey, naïve with inexperience and the cage is represented by an excuse she has used for most of her life to not be wild and free. She is accustomed to life in her culture, her cage, where it is respected to remain a virgin until marriage, but in the United States she realizes that these rules seldom apply. So she has made her culture her own prison bars, but knows that it is hardly a restriction. Yolanda states, “By then, I was a lapsed Catholic, my sisters and I had been pretty well Americanized since our arrival in this country a decade before, so really, I didn’t have a good excuse.” (Alvarez 87) It is here where Yolanda realizes that the cage door is open, and has been for a long time; she has always been free. It is easy to relate to her actions of deriving an excuse to justify not fulfilling a desire or a dream. It takes Yolanda years, but she finally steps out of her own self-imprisonment into a new life and a new world that has welcomed her all along.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez is very much a story of immigration, and of an immigrant finding their identity. Moving from one country to another is a challenging ordeal. Besides the pressures of settling in and making friends, there is also the cultural divide. Many immigrants, especially children, try to overcome this obstacle by imitating their peers, hoping this will help them ‘fit in’. However, their peers will often perceive them as being a copycat, which can lead to animosity against the immigrant.
Julia Alvarez wrote this book in the 1990’s a time of great immigration. According to the Urban Institute, “Record high immigration marked the 1990’s, with over 13 million people entering the United States”. This book is a message to that large population of people. Instead of imitating your surroundings, define your identity by who you want to be. For Sister Zoe, Yolanda’s 4th grade teacher compared people to snowflakes: “Each flake was different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful” (167). Unfortunately, many immigrants do imitate their peers, which leads to a dislike of them. For example, the boys at Carla’s school taunt her, calling her a “dirty spic”. If she had embraced her origins, then these boys could not have harmed her. As it was, her trying to fit in to make the boys stop only made the taunting worse.
A clear, and key part of the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is the style in which Julia Alvarez wrote it. The novel, written in reverse chronological order is separated into three parts with intertwining stories. Alvarez wrote in this style because it almost adds a sense of confusion, and uncertainty if what the reader will find next in the novel. This connects the reader to the Garcia girls’ own dubieties to their lives. Each girl is often met with an unexpected obstacle or event. From both Yolanda’s and Sandra’s stays in a mental hospital, to a young Carla’s experience with the pervert, to Sofia running off with Otto, the girl’s have the same uncertainty from day to day as the readers have from page to page.
Alvarez also wrote in reverse chronological order to represent how family and individual history affects a person’s life. She began at the girl’s adult lives, going backward in time to show how their lives shaped them into these women. In Yolanda’s case, the black cat that haunts her since childhood symbolizes how she was taken from her homeland at such a young age. “At that hour and in that loneliness, I hear her, a black furred thing lurking in the corners of my life, her magenta mouth opening, wailing over some violation that lies at the center of my art.” (Alvarez 289) Yolanda is expressing how her past and roots haunt her, how the violation of being taken from her culture at such a young age is the reason for any psychological trauma she went through. This is ultimately the reason she returns to the Dominican Republic at the beginning of the novel. Alvarez’s writing style helps readers connect with the Garcia girls, and shows readers how their history helped shape their lives.
“How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,” by Julia Alvarez, like the two other books we have read this summer, presents us with the problem women face trying to reach their full potential as human beings. Unlike Harriet Jacob’s “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Alvarez presents us with a group of sisters who are not struggling to gain physical freedom from their masters, escape from arranged marriages, or regain lost family connections. Instead, the Garcia girls want a kind of freedom that is more subtle than that wanted by Linda Brent or Janie Crawford.
In the Dominican Republic the Garcia girls were part of a privileged class. They were far from impecunious, and attended private schools, and wore fine clothes.The Garcia girls want to be unique persons right from the start, not copies of anyone they have known or seen, and no less than the men they know. They are willing to fight, even within their family, to achieve their goals in a strange new country. The girls’ struggle intensifies as they try to remain within the family structure while adapting to modern American society. They don’t see “running away” as an option from this problem. The Gacia girls face their problem of having to change, but the real combat is for others to accept these changes.
Carlos, their father, is the character most associated with those who would repress women. Several times he expresses his disappointment over having no sons, “only girls.” In his mind, girls are very different from boys in terms of what can be expected of them, and what they can expect from life in general. Like a totalitarian leader, he tries to censor what the girls hear and learn. He firmly believes this control will benefit them, as they are weaker in his mind. When Carla is selected to give her school’s valedictorian address, Carlos is horrified by her choice of content in her speech. She uses Walt Whitman’s famous lines, “One-self I sing, a simple separate person…the female equally with the male I sing.” Carlos is enraged by the statement of female equality and makes her write another essay—one with no passion or mention of women’s freedom or equality. The father, who even fought for freedom in his own country and had to elope, can’t stand the presence of freedom in the lives of his daughters.
There are many instances of crude language and lewd behavior in the book, as the girls recall all that they encountered and learned despite the father’s wishes. Alvarez is telling us that freedom comes at a price, and some of what complete people must learn is not very pleasant. Ironically, her book has been banned in some American schools and libraries, which is interesting because it just proves the author’s point that many people still want to control what they think a “proper” girl should see or even know about. Alvarez goes into depth explaining the discomfort that a woman might feel in achieving her goals. This is illustrated when Sandra becomes so uncomfortable with her successful artwork that she begins to think it is actually evil. Sandra has doubts about whether or not she really deserves success—as if the place of women in the world, even the world of art, really should be second best to the men.
Alvarez wants us to consider which is better, a world where those in authority keep perfect order by censorship, or a less perfect world where people experience a full life.
New experiences surrounded the four girls in Julia Alvarez's novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. From clothes and food to the basis of culture in America and even weed, Carla, Yoyo, Sandi and Fifi explore it all. One main symbol found in this enticing story is the first sight of snow. For months in her new school, Yolanda is taught what an atomic bomb is and how to cover her head in case one appears. The sight of tiny white oracles falling form the sky fills her head with the negative images drawn up by her Mami and she screams out "BOMB!", scaring her fellow classmates and teacher. Yoyo soon finds out this is snow, a mystifying new object, signifying the future. However, although Yolanda might be feeling hopeful and ready for this bright future, there is also the scary truth of the unknown. Yolanda shows us in this novel that such a new thing can be terrifying when she identifies the new sight as a bomb, but soon realizes what a wonderful pleasure it is. Each snowflake is different and unique in it's own way just like the people of the world. Julia Alvarez is trying to show us that Yolanda and her three sisters are just snowflakes in the vast universe trying to find out who they are inside.
Maternal instinct gives most animals an intense devotion to their young. A mother will do anything for her child. If they are separated, the child will feel extreme sorrow and hurt after being abandoned. Its survival is in jeopardy. In Julia Alvarez’s novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the separation of the mother cat and her child symbolize the “separation” of Yolanda and the Dominican Republic when she is forced to leave her motherland.
In the last chapter of the novel , Yolanda encounters a mother cat and her children. She takes the baby cat before it is ready, despite a warning that “to take away (the cat) would be a violation of its natural right to live. It would die…” (Alvarez 285). Despite the man’s warning, Yolanda takes the kitten away from its mother. Later, when she tries to return the kitten, it is unable to find its way home to the shed where it lived with its mother. Afterward, she is haunted by a vision of a mother cat looking for its child.
The pain and separation the mother cat feels represents Yolanda’s difficulty leaving the Dominican Republic. Like a lost kitten, Yolanda feels alone and confused in a new world. She doesn’t want to leave her old life and is hesitant to accept a new one in New York City. At the same time, her family in the Dominican Republic represents the mother cat. In the way that the cat doesn’t want its child to leave her, the Garcias don’t want their “child” (Yolanda) to leave them. Five years later, Yolanda returns her homeland. But just as the cat cannot survive, she is unable to remember the life she left behind. She feels guilty that she cannot remember her culture like her aunts and cousins can. Like the cat who has forgotten where it lives, Yolanda cannot recall her roots in the old country after she returns. The dreams of the mother cat that plague Yolanda throughout her life parallel the hurt she feels for leaving the country. “I wake at three in the morning… I hear (the mother cat) lurking in the corners of my life… wailing over some violation that lies at the center of my heart.” (Alvarez 290) Yolanda is not only haunted by a mother cat losing its kitten; she is also haunted by her loss of culture from her motherland.
A huge part of growing up is adjusting to change; as we go through life, we are thrown into new situations and faced with new conflicts. One prominent theme in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez is how the girls adapt to change and their new home. The four Garcia girls are raised by very pious, strict parents in a tight-knit community of the Dominican Republic. They lead extremely sheltered lives until the family immigrates to the United States and are exposed to a contrary society. Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia experience a true culture shock, when they find themselves surrounded by Americans their own age. Teens in the United States are far more experimental and rebellious. The girls all adjust to this new lifestyle in different ways, some better than others. A passage from the novel that perfectly illustrates this theme of adaption to change is when Yolanda is sitting in a classroom in New York City, after having lived in the country for only a year. Outside, snow begins to fall. Yolanda, accustomed to the tropical climate of the Caribbean, is frightened by these strange “dots in the air”(Alvarez, 167). Thrown into a new world so different from the one she was raised in, Yolanda is perplexed by the snow and mistakes it for the initial signs of an air raid. “‘Snow,’ I repeated. I looked out the window warily. All my life I had heard about the white crystals that fell out of American skies in the winter. From my desk I watched the fine powder dust the sidewalk and parked cars below. Each flake was different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful”(Alvarez, 167). The snow illustrates the drastic climate change, but also symbolizes their new way of life in America. At first, Yolanda is shocked and afraid of the snow, just like the girls are all fearful of their new home. Even though Yolanda and Sandra have nervous breakdowns and take longer to adjust, all of the sisters eventually assimilate into the melting pot that is America.
In the captivating novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alevarez, a woman’s identity plays a large role, especially for the naïve narrator, Yolanda. Some woman will journey for identity through relationships such as Janie from “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, and others in blood similar to Sophie in “The Davinci Code”, but Yolanda always had her identity in her name even from a young age. When Yolanda was young, she was always referred to with her sisters as ‘the four girls’ or as Yo, Yoyo, Joe, etc. individually. Most people rarely used Yolanda’s full name, but when they truly appreciated it, she took a notice, such with Yolanda’s private school teacher, Sister Zoe. Yolanda always enjoyed her name and never really took pleasure when anyone called her anything else. The worst impact Yolanda had with her identity in her name was with her husband John, who seemed to call her anything but. This may have led to confused identity after she left him, making Yolanda unsure of who she was and what reality was. For example, when Yolanda wrote the goodbye letter before leaving john, Alevarez writes, “She wrote him a short memo, Gone- then added –to my folks. She thought of signing it Yolanda, but her real name no longer sounded like her own, so instead she scribbled his name for her, Joe.” John tried to give Yolanda a new identity, but luckily Yolanda left and got help before this could damage who she was forever. Yolanda finally found herself in her name, requesting only to be called Yolanda from then on out. She also went back to her family in The Dominican Republic to search her own self further. Yolanda found the hidden woman in her name, and she finally embraced it.
"All men are created equal." This statement was written by our country's creators. However, the statement does not say that all men are TREATED equal. In "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez, Alvarez shows the racism and hardship that many immigrants face in America through the eyes of the four Garcia girls, Sandi, Yoyo, Carla, and Sofia. Each girl faces discrimination or hardship in some way, in a country that is supposedly built around equality. For instance, at school, students bully and insult Carla because of her heritage. The boys at her school mimick her accent. "EH-stop! Plees EH-stop." (Alvarez 153) They also pelt her with stones and call her a spic. Although there is supposed to be no racism America, racism was clearly directed toward Carla. Another clear example of racism toward the Garcias is when "La Bruja", the woman that lives below them in their appartment, insults the whole garcia family. She says that they have no right to be in this country. She says their food smells wierd and that they are too loud. She also calls the Garcias spics. Even though "La Bruja" is older and should know better than to insult someone, she does it anyway. This shows that it is not only young people that are being racist, but it is older people as well. Many people also made assumptions about the Garcia girals because of their heritage. Yoyo's boyfriend Rudy wants to have sex with Yoyo, but Yoyo doesn't want to. As a result, Rudy breaks up with Yoyo. Rudy assumed that Yoyo would be "hot-blooded, being Spanish and all..."(Alvarez 99). This shows that Americans often make false assumptions about people of different nationalities. Clearly, Alvarez tries to proove her theory that there is a great deal of racism in this country, even though it is supposed to be equal.
In How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, the “four girls” are brought up as one unit. Their family treats them as if they are the same person, mainly because they are so close in age. When one daughter commits a misdeed, their parents scold all four of them. For instance, when Carlos found letters from Otto in Sofia’s drawer, he confronted all of the girls, instead of pulling her off to the side and reprimanding her separately. Furthermore, their mother has an especially difficult time telling her daughters apart, so she color-codes their wardrobes. Carla, the eldest daughter (and a child psychologist), noted “in an autobiographical paper… the color system had weakened the four girls’ identity differentiation abilities,” (Alvarez 41). Carla made a valid point; when a group of people are continuously identified separately by something like a color or a number, they begin to see that as the only difference between them and the other people within the group. Thus, it becomes difficult for a person to find out who they really are. For example, Yolanda has trouble figuring out what she wants to do with her life. At first, she tries being a poet, but eventually becomes a teacher. For a long time, Yolanda has trouble coming to terms with the fact that she has not written as much as she would have liked, a clear result of her mother’s lack of encouragement of her individuality. Moreover, Yolanda and Carla each go through hardships when attempting to realize their cultural identity. Yolanda becomes confused enough in that area that she returns to the Dominican Republic, not knowing when she will go back to the United States. Carla longs for home the first few years after arriving in the US; she does not understand her new environment. Plus, Carlos and Laura decide to send the girls to the Dominican Republic every summer in order for them to not lose touch with their culture. Obviously, one’s culture is immensely important when it comes to growing up and understanding the world, since Yolanda and Carla (as well as the other sisters) each had a tough time growing up away from their homeland. All in all, the importance of identity is a dominant theme in this novel.
In the novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez, the author emphasizes the importance of discovering an identity in the modern culture of America through Yolanda and the relationship in which she encounters in her life. When Yolanda first met John, her ex-husband, she “(was) in love,” (70, Alvarez) and felt alive as “a river ran outside (her) window, bordered by cypresses, willows, great sweating ferns, thick stalks and palms. Huge creatures of the imagination scuttled across the muddy bottom of the river,” (70, Alvarez). However, after being “tricked by the barks and the howls,” (70, Alvarez) of what she felt was the new “Yoyo”, she grows daunted as the “beast howls from the river (and) the ram gallops away from the sky, startled by human sound,” (70, Alvarez). After marrying John, she becomes “Joe”, “Joey”, simply just part of a “rack of personalized key chains,”(68 Alvarez). She loses herself and her identity as she becomes John, trapped and entangled in his identity. When rhyming with her own name she suggests “sky”, feeling the perfect glove of personalization that “made it right,” (72, Alvarez). “I rhymes with sky!”(72, Alvarez) she deduces, only to find herself noticing that his eyes “were the same shade of blue as the sky,” (72, Alvarez). Lost and helpless, the ram is entangled in the net of the beast, unable to break free. However, Yolanda manages to bolt free from the net, reminding “Joe” “Yo rhymes with cielo in Spanish,” (72, Alvarez) in which liberates Yo and causes her to regain her sense of self. She is sent sprinting into “the safety of her first tongue,” (72, Alavrez), reviving her lost individuality and reminding her of who Yolanda is, a Garcia from the Dominican Republic. In doing so, she allows herself to rediscover her purpose and meaning in the modern culture of America and mold herself into Yoyo, the poet, free thinker, the curious girl that immerses herself in the culture of this “new” world.
In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, the author adresses how people tend to judge, reject and assume about others based solely on where they come from or their ethnicity. At a young age, the four sisters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia, were forced to leave their home in the Dominican Republic and flee to the United States.Many things were different in this new country and the assimilation process took a toll on all of the sisters. In their home country, they were only "one of the innumerable, handsome de la Torre girls"(241). However, in the United States, they were different and stood out; the attention received was usually negative, harsh ridicule. For example, at Carla's school she was called a "dirty spic"(153) and tormented because of her strange accent. Their uncommon ethnicity also caused many to judge them based on stereotypes. In college, Yolanda met a boy, Rudy, who assumed she would "be hot-blooded, being Spanish and all"(99) and wassurprised when Yolanda "didn't want tojust be in the sack...[her] first time around with a man"(97). Carla and Yolanda both were judged because they were hispanic. Also, the entire Garcia family was despised as a whole in their apartment building by the old women who lived below them. She disliked them because "their food smelled"(170) and "they spoke too loudly and not in english"(170). These things were part of their cultural identity, which they could not change and because of it were shunned. Additionally, Garcia family had a Haitian laundry maid, named Pila, whom other maids "feared her, for Haiti was synonymous with voodoo"(279). Although Pila was "the strangest maid [they] ever had"(279), she was unfairly pre-assessed by her peers only because of her homeland. People are more than just a nationality or a race and one should not judge them or make assumptions in reference to their ethnicity.
In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez explores the immigrant’s battle for acceptance and the psychological toll it takes on them. The Garcia girls all felt pressure from two sources, each with contradictory views: their parents and society of 1960’s and 1970’s America. Dominican tradition heavily enforces the patriarchal family and leaves little room for female success, whereas in the United States, the 60’s and 70’s were times of increasingly liberal views and a rise in feminist ideals. This conflict shaped their lives, tore them apart at times and yet bound them as a family.
The four girls waged many battles, some internal and some external with Papi, while dealing with Americanization. Papi dreamed the American dream and yet wanted to keep his girls young and naïve, bound to the ideals of his Dominican upbringing. While he wanted to be a success in America he was not prepared for the sacrifice he would have to make or the conflict it would cause. His girls endured and eventually engaged in many of the typical activities of the American teenager: they dabbled in drugs, had premarital sex and obtained college educations, all of which ‘ruined them for marriage’ and were unseemly according to Dominican tradition. Despite their desire to deny their homeland and their father, it was always present in their minds, a constant tearing at their being.
Yolanda’s struggle to maintain her Dominican roots takes the form of the mother cat that haunts her dreams for years: “…I hear her, black furred thing lurking in the corners of my life, her magenta mouth opening, wailing over some violation that lies at the center of my art.” (Alvarez 290). This expresses her inner turmoil and fear of forgetting her origins, though she is thoroughly the part of a modern American woman. For Sandi, her inner conflict of abandoning her traditions takes shape in the episode of the flamenco dancers and a drunken Mrs. Fanning. Mrs. Fanning represents the liberal and wild American culture, rudely interrupting the flamenco dancers and making a fool of herself, while the dancers represent the beauty, sensuality and grace of Sandi’s Dominican roots. Sofia’s reconciliation with her father shows her desperation to hold on to her culture, in which family is such a large part. Carla was traumatized by the cruel boys at school and the pervert in the lime green car. Carla becomes a child psychologist in her later years and expresses modern ideas about her mother’s ‘color system’ of clothing the girls in an autobiographical paper she wrote. However, all the girls struggle to figure who they were and which culture they identify with throughout their lives. In the end they realized that it was a combination of their experiences and cultures that shaped them rather than one or the other.
Both Yolanda and Sandi spend time in mental hospitals in their young adulthood as a result of their confusing journey to find out who they are. Their psychological issues can be traced back to the strains of assimilating and forming their own identity without upsetting the delicate balance of the American and Dominican culture blend. Yolanda’s husband John is representative of the United States and the American way. When she becomes upset with John, she goes to stay with her relatives, the Dominican half of Yolanda’s tormented mind. Sandi becomes enthralled with the look of the skinny American models and through her obsession, develops an eating disorder that could have cost her life. Her parents rescue her by turning her over to a psychiatric hospital. Her parents embody Dominican Republic and through rescuing two of their daughters, who suffered most severely because of the pressures to become more American, Julia Alvarez communicates the importance of one’s roots and the consequences of ignoring them. These experiences bound them together as a Dominican-American family, content to be just that.
The childhood environment of an individual significantly changes a person's mentality. In the 1960's, Cuba was going through many struggles. A new dictator came to power and anyone who opposed his laws felt his wrath. In "How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents," by Julia Alvarez, four young daughters of a Cuban rebel are relocated from their warm, Spanish home to the vastly different world of Brooklyn, NY. Needless to say, it took awhile for them to adjust to their new home. Their parents, Laura and Carlos try to keep the girls under a close eye, but to no avail. The 1960's peace, sex, "against the man" belief had seeped into the girls mind by the time they reached university. For example, "Fifi was on for smoking in the bathroom." (Alvarez 110) Along, with their mother finding a baggy filled with marijuana in the girls' bedroom. Between smoking, drug-using boyfriends, and family feuds the girls seemed to be fitting right into the 1960 American life. The trouble was not that the girls could not adapt to American life, it was that their Spanish roots were slipping away from them. Every year the girls' seemed to be speaking less and less Spanish and caring less and less about their Spanish heritage. It's hard to imagine trying to be two different people. For each girl their were two versions. The American "Joe", "FiFi", Carla and "Sandy"; the Spanish Yolanda, Sofie, Carla and Sandra. The American version of each are free-thinking, independent woman, while the Hispanic versions are second-class citizens who cook and clean for their men. Throughout the book the Garcia sisters, fight to find out who they truly are; American-Hispanics or Hispanic-Americans. In the end, all four girls learn to balance their Hispanic heritage with their contradictory American ties.
In the novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, the author, Julia Alvarez, encourages the reader to ponder on the effects of a reputation. Members of the Garcia family all tend to a have a reputation that changes throughout the novel, this abrupt alteration causes negative affects for the family. For instance, the Garcia family had the reputation of being very wealthy but when they escape to the United States, they are suddenly very poor. This causes Carlos to be ashamed of himself especially when he was unable to pay for dinner and buy his daughters a doll. When Laura was re-telling “Carla’s Story” he interjected at times to make sure people knew he was working to support his family. Also when Sofia gives him an inappropriate kiss at his birthday party he is embarrassed of his daughter’s behavior. He worries about his family’s sophisticated reputation, which his unrestrained daughter and financial crisis had shattered. Another reputation that causes negative affects is how Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia are referred to as the four girls continuously. When they are older they reflect back on how that hurt them. During their youth, they resented being alike one another and receiving the same treatment, therefore they ridiculed their mother’s “color code”. The Garcia girls desired to demolish the reputation of always being the four girls. Interestingly, when Laura realizes her esteemed reputation as a “Garcia de la Torre” is not recognized in America she tries to gain the important status by inventing. This proves to be difficult particularly because her family does not encourage her. Her family’s reaction upsets her and she gives up on trying to make a better reputation for herself. Julia Alvarez wishes the reader to understand that reputations whether they are good or bad always affect the person.
-Gabriella Concepcion
Julia Alvarez is saying that idolizing independence can send subliminal messages that one is incapable of being self-sufficient. If one is always being forced on their own, they may start to think that someone is trying to say something, for example, that they need to become more independent. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, Mr. and Mrs. Garcia promote independence for "the four girls" every chance they get. They do not want their daughters to grow up to become completely co-dependent beings, helpless and lost. Carlos and Laura Garcia feel that it is better to be "an independent nobody than a high-class house slave" (Alvarez 144). This causes the girls to become very insecure about how self-sufficient they are, and how co-dependent they are relative to others. Their self-confidence is lowered because they are constantly under the pressure to be independent from their parents. Because the girls feel so strongly that they need to be independent, an idea embedded in their brains from the time they were born, their minds are weak and easily manipulated. The girls are often left groping for words because their minds are so scrambled. Mr. and Mrs. Garcia bring up their daughters independence at every chance that comes up, and thus creates an insecure group of four girls trying to discover themselves while meeting their parents highest of standards: the girls independence.
The meaning of love is interpreted differently between different cultures and even different individuals. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, Yolanda struggles to find a man who loves her the way in which she believes is true love. While Yolanda looks for a man who respects her and her Dominican culture, she consistently mingles with males who worry only about her physical makeup, not her personality or her feelings.
While at college, Yolanda meets a student named Rudy. Rudy seems like an interesting, deep, and unique boy, showing intimate feelings toward Yolanda. However, Rudy failed to see all the wonderful qualities that Yolanda displayed. He was blind to her congenial personality and her bright demeanor. Rudy's main goal was to make love with Yolanda, then maybe having a strong relationship. Rudy assumed that this goal would be easy to reach, because he stereotyped Yolanda as a Dominican girl who was "hot-blooded, being Spanish and all..." (Alvarez 99). However, when Rudy would try to "play' with Yolanda, she would hiss, "No, don't" (Alvarez 97). While Yolanda knew she could not be harmed by Rudy's crude actions, she declined because she felt that this was the improper way to express true love.
Even though Yolanda liked Rudy a lot, she did not respect the way he treated their relationship. She wanted a passionate, intimate relationship, while Rudy used their relationship as an excuse for sex, often asking "when's it going to be all right?" (Alvarez 97). Yolanda does not believe that this is what true love is all about. This is why, in the end, Yolanda parted ways with Rudy, resulting in one of many failed relationships.
Throughout history, The United States has been a melting pot of various nationalities. From Irish and Italians in the 1800s to Central and South Americans today, the "land of opportunity" has always been a dream destination for immigrants. However, this supposed heaven-like country does not always greet these newcomers with open arms. One prominent theme of Julia Alvarez's novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is the hypocrisy of the so-called equal society in America made obvious through discrimination and prejudice towards immigrants. In their apartment building, for instance, the old lady downstairs hates the Garcias because of their race and Hispanic culture, voicing her feelings to the super with complaints like "Their food smelled. They spoke too loudly and not in English" (Alvarez 170). Also, the girls face torment at school because of their Dominican background. Children, who learn by the example set by their parents, hurl racial slurs and insults at all four girls, sneering "Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic!" (Alvarez 153) while pelting their feet with stones on the playground. These instances of discrimination in a land that is supposed to be free and equal for all leads to tears and frustration for the Garcia family, much as it does in the real world for other families and individuals like them, no matter the ethnicity. The theme of the novel sheds a light on the true hypocrisy behind the welcoming exterior set out by the United States.
In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez uses the four sisters to contrast cultural expectations of women in the Dominican Republic verses the United States. Sofia, Sandra, Yolanda, and Carla were born into a very large family consisting of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. As in all other Dominican families, the Garcia women had vastly different roles and expectations than the men. Women are expected to cook, clean the house, and stay home to raise the children. Dominican women did not question their role in society because that is how it always had been. After their father gets himself into political trouble, the four girls and their parents quickly uproot from the small island and move to America. The family quickly learns that things are very much different in the new country. Instead of being in charge of the house, American women were out working and providing for their families. This was a whole new way of life that the sisters adapted to. Yolanda, Sandra, Carla, and Sofia struggled to find a balance between how they were raised to act and what they were experiencing in America. One of Yolanda’s lovers complained he was caught between “the woman’s libber and the Catholic senorita” (48). They kissed boys and smoked marijuana, embracing the rebellious teenage spirit in the United States. Women in the states were given freedom that those who lived in the Dominican Republic were denied. Julia Alvarez compares American and Dominican expectations for women, which are the two extremes. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents illustrates these different cultures.
In the novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez the Garcia family moves from their wealthy home in the Dominican Republic to a middle class community in the United States. The Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia have difficulty “Americanizing” themselves when they arrive in the U.S. Each girl is caught between the threshold of becoming more American, to fit in with the “American ways” and still embrace their Dominican Republic heritage. When Yolanda, as a young girl, discovers the brood of kittens in the coal shed, she finds herself particularly interested in a certain kitten, one she considered a curiosity. “Immediately, I singled out one who had four little white paws and a white spot between its ears, fully dressed, so it looked, as opposed to the others who were careless and had lost their shoes and their caps. This one, a curiosity, was the one I intended for me.” (281, Alvarez) This kitten is a perfect representation of the four Garcia sisters; each paw represents a different Garcia girl. The girls are raised the same way, but each sister has a different personality and leads a different life. Each sister is a different kind of curiosity. Yolanda asks the hunter for advice as to when she could take the kitten away from its family. The hunter tells her, “To take it away would be a violation of its natural right to live.” (285, Alvarez) Yolanda has a difficulty understanding the hunter, so he states the effect of taking the kitten from its mother even more simply. The hunter told Yolanda, “It would die, he said plainly. So you must wait, you must wait until that kitten can make it on its own.” (285, Alvarez) The hunter’s explanation is similar to the Garcia girls moving to America; not quite ready for such a big change, especially at the ages the sisters were when they came to America. Yolanda decides to take the kitten from its mother, despite all that the hunter has told her. When Yolanda brings the kitten into her house, the mother cat follows Yolanda to the door, but Yolanda shuts the door before the mother can follow her into the house. Yolanda decides that she can no longer stand the sound of meowing from the kitten and throws the helpless kitten out the window. She watches the wounded kitten make a poor attempt to cross the yard to wait for its mother to come back, but she never appears. This depicts how the Garcia sisters had no control over whether they came to America or not. Their Dominican heritage tried to follow them to America, but it was shut down quickly when the Garcia girls tried to “Americanize” themselves. It’s hard to live when the people who you need to support you are not there.
Traveling from one country to another involves many changes and challenges. However, believing in luck will cause luck to occur throughout these challenges and changes. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, The Garcia family avoids the danger of their country of the Dominican Republic by escaping to live in New York City. Throughout their journey, the family benefits by having much luck.
The family has always been known as “lucky.” (Alvarez, 58) The journey to America was luck itself because of the safe and unknown arrival of the Garcia Family. Adjusting to the new culture of America became difficult for the Garcia Family. Carla, the oldest of the Garcia girls, thought that “she would never get the hang of this new country.” (Alvarez, 151) However, out of luck, Carla and the whole family ended up adjusting to the new life. Experiencing a life in a different country benefits a person in many ways. The Garcia family was lucky to experience a life of cultures and languages different from what they are used to. Many events in the Garcia family’s life occurred while keeping this good luck. For example, after the incident in the shed during art lessons, Sandi “was sure that [she] was about to die.” (Alvarez, 253) However, having good luck, she “did not die.” (Alvarez, 253) Furthermore, the family saw snow for the first time, and had Christmas for the first time. These events allowed them to adjust easier to the American lifestyle. Therefore, the family had luck because of the ability to live the way Americans do. The Garcia family was lucky throughout their new life in America and was lucky to flee their country safely. Luck played a major role in their lives and Alvarez shows this in her novel by showing how the characters believed in their luck. The characters admit this luck when they say, “We are lucky girls, Nivea was right, oh so lucky.” (Alvarez, 262) The reader learns from this novel that luck only happens if one has the ability to believe in it. The Garcia family believed in luck and received it in return.
In “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”, a novel by Julia Alvarez, the Garcia family immigrates to America in search of freedom and safety. They abandon everything they once knew to find a better life, merely based on their blurred view of America. However, when faced with new experiences, the “four girls” struggle to find comfort in their unfamiliar surroundings. Despite conflicts in their lives, the girls turn to a few “iconic American symbols” to give them hope during trying times. The most vital of all symbols proves to be snow. In the Dominican Republic, the family marveled over the thought of snow, a miracle they had never experienced. When they first visit America, the girls aspire to go to New York. They are enticed by the idea, describing the city as a place "where it was winter and the snow fell from heaven to earth like the Bible's little pieces of manna bread” (Alvarez 257). When the girls reach New York and settle in, the wonder they had once longed for now frightens them. This is shown when Yolanda first experiences snow while surrounded by American-born children. She sees her first snowfall and immediately shrieks, “Bomb! Bomb” (Alvarez 167). Both of these views show the family’s change in opinion of America. From afar, the mysterious country promised happiness and the Garcia’s see this through the enchantment of snow. However, as the family faces hardships in their new country, their success is slowed by hardships they had not predicted. The snow, which once symbolized freedom, now is seen as a representation of danger. As time progresses, the Garcias grow more accustomed to their surroundings. Through American symbols, like snow, the family is shown that to gain success, one must leave themselves vulnerable to change and struggle. “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” is an accurate representation of the lifelong struggles of an immigrant in America.
In "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez, there are two main characters that are the youngest of a very large family. Sofia and Carlos Garcia are each the undeveloped children of their immediate family. Carlos, for example, is the youngest and tries very hard to fulfill the requirement of being a successful father by having a son. This is the reason Don Carlos has four daughters. Sofia is a victim of being the baby of the Garcia family. Sofia has three older
sisters whom she looks up to as role models. Her older sisters'
influence makes her grow and mature more quickly causing Sofia to lose her virginity at age sixteen and do drugs. Sofia's parents keep an extra watchful eye on her. Their constant supervision increases Sofia's want to escape their grasp and be on her own which is why she seems the most disobedient. "Fifi opted to stay. Better one of a dozen chaperoned
cousins, she figured, then home alone with Mami and Papi breathing down her neck..." (Alvarez, 116). Many individuals believe that being the youngest sibling is the easiest however with parents and older siblngs "the baby of the family" is always being looked after. Sofia reacts to the many guardians by running away with Otto and disobeying her parents
often. In "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez, Sofia, especially, is brought down by being the youngest of four children which affects her later life.
“Each flake was different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.” (Alvarez 167)
Perfect and beautiful - Words that everyone strives to be. What do these words mean? The Garcia Girls of Julia Alvarez’s novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, teach readers that being perfect and beautiful is not about having the right clothes or the right looks, but having the right heart and the right view of oneself. When striving to be someone else; someone who “fits in”, one is not perfect- nor are they beautiful. God made each human being a unique individual with unique thoughts and opinions. So, when one changes themselves to be like someone else, that person is no longer what God had intended them to be; therefore they are not perfect or beautiful. As said in Lois Lowry’s The Giver, “Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness…and did away with difference. We gained control of many things, but we had to let go of others.” In other words, when trying to fit in, people lose things that make them special and unique. The Garcia girls were excited to embrace the American culture and fit in with their new American peers, but as they began to drink alcohol, smoke, and straighten their hair, they had to leave their unique thoughts and opinions at home. Throughout the novel, the four sisters are challenged to be true to their culture and to themselves. They are filled with the excitement of dating boys who are not cousins, but over time feel sorrow that those boys do not share similar values. Throughout their lives the Garcia sisters, just like other teenagers, are told to be more like this or to be more like that. “…we met the right kind of Americans all right, but they didn’t exactly mix with us.” (Alvarez 108) They change their hair, their clothes, and their personalities to fit the descriptions of what other people find cool, which only resulted in the girls’ unhappiness. Although things like their curly black hair, their Papi’s mustache, and their Mami’s crazy inventions subject the four girls to their classmates’ constant ridicule, they come to realize that what their peers think of as weird is what makes the girls who they are and that they are perfect just by being themselves.
Culture shapes humans faith, identity, and what they believe in. In the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, author Julia Alvarez explores what happens when different ethnicities relocate, and experience new, strange ways of doing things. The four Garcia sisters must go through the differences of American culture, mainly the language. Not just because of the Spanish English clash, but the slang words used as well, words that in their culture they would never say in certain situations. For example when the one sister Yolanda has a relationship with a man, Rudy, who believes making love is just for fun. This is foreign to her way of thinking; she would like things to be a bit more serious, and is also turned off by the words he uses to describe the whole process.
This shows just one way of how difficult it must have been, not only for the Garcia family, but also for all immigrants in America. “It bothered me that they should treat me like a geography lesson for their son. But I didn’t have the vocabulary back then to explain even to myself what annoyed me about their remark.”(98 Alvarez). In many instances when new people come into someone’s life they love learning about their background, and customs. However most immigrants do not like this, and like Yolanda are not sure exactly how to explain why. Maybe they would just like to be able to not stand out, or to be treated like everyone else. It must be frustrating trying to learn to live life in a totally new way, and to have to try and understand America. Yet, in the end as much as humans try to adapt with their new surrounding every time they move, they must learn to also stay true to their original beliefs, and faith. Without all of the diverse cultures everyone would be the same, and then the world would not go round.
In immigrant families, it is often the children who have an easier time assimilating to their new surroundings. Julia Alvarez express this statement in her novel "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents". Mr. and Mrs. Garcia feel obligated to preserve their daughters' Dominican heritage. To demonstrate, the "four girls" would always be "dressed alike in diminishing-sized, different color versions"(Alvarez_40) of what the mother wore. Back in the Dominica Republic, tradition was an enormous part of every day life in the Garcia family. It would be taboo for Mr. and Mrs. Garcia to were american fashion. The four Girls, however, were raised in America so they would be swept away by american fashion easily. Although tradition was a big part of life, it is also easier for Mrs. Garcia to keep the four girls out of trouble if they stay within the boundaries of Dominican culture.
How much the four girls were affected by american culture affected their relationship with their father. Mr. Garcia lived a lot of his adult life in a corrupt and dangerous Dominican Republic. The lack of respect to authority in america in the 1960's was a foreign concept to him. When Yolanda writes a speech that disrespects her teachers he immediately rejects it. His wife retaliates by saying "this is America, papi, America! You are not in a savage country anymore!"(Alvarez_146). Yolanda probably never have thought that because the 1960's were a rebellious time, and most people in America were a little rebellious. Papi just couldn't imagine a reason to be rebellious in a country were a person could have numerous freedoms. Overall, the four girls' relationship with their father remains sound.
It seems that in every society, women have been demeaned by their male counterparts. From the Stone Age to the Renaissance to today, women’s rights have been suppressed by tradition, religion and modern day culture. Julia Alvarez’s novel How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents combines and represents all of these hindrances of women’s rights in the point of view of four young Dominican women who immigrated to the United States.
Yolanda is the third of the four Garcia girls. Although she is more tentative than the rest of her sisters, her writing forms a solid base for her character, much like other women writers in the past, such as Emily Dickenson. In the beginning of Garcia Girls, for example, Yolanda makes references to a Renaissance book of acting. Her allusions to this form of art can draw several conclusions, two of which being as follows: firstly, her reference to such art prove that she is cultured and intelligent, unlike how men stereotype her to be. Secondly, it plays on the oppression of women that is the main theme of the book. A quote Yolanda repeatedly refers to, especially when making references to her aunt, from said book is, “The lady is caught in a smile she cannot escape” (Alvarez 10). This relates to the book’s focus on women’s struggle to retain normal, happy lifestyles while their lives are overrun by the iron grip men hold over them. Is Yolanda subconsciously wondering where a “Women’s Renaissance” is in a time period of rapid progress for men?
During the time of the Renaissance, women were regarded pretty much as the property of their husbands and other male family members. Although modern day society (both in Latin America and the United States), attempts to represent women and men as equals, Alvarez exposes the harsh truth of the little progress that was actually made. Women during olden times were bound by laws that restricted their rights. While there are no legal boundaries against women in American society, people still hold Renaissance-age ideas of where women’s places in society should be. For example, women still make less money, on average, than men working in the same position. Tradition in society is to blame for this imbalance.
Women have and continue to face challenges from traditional laws and religions to modern day expectations and social norms in every culture. For example, in some Muslim countries, women are only allowed in public if their cover themselves with burkas and are escorted by a man. Although there is no law deeming it so, only men in Garcia Girls normally drive places. When Yolanda defies this social normality, she faces harsh ridicule. Yoyo and her sisters all jump metaphorical hurdles constructed by men when they try to become independent women.
When the Garcia girls moved to the United States, they anticipated more opportunities and equality for them in the “Land of the Free.” However, many of the sexist traditions, plus a handful of new ones, follow them from the Dominican Republic to America. In the US, men still try to control the Garcia girls. Even though it was the 60s and the younger generation was experimenting with all sorts of things, the girls would still lower themselves to their father, lovers, and society in general. Yolanda, for example, always labored to please her father, like when she wrote a speech for school, hoping so much he would like it and then helplessly watched it be torn up by his hands in a fit of rage. Furthermore, her first husband, John, tried keeping her in a very traditional household place, and even called her different names! Lastly, Yolanda contended herself with being a schoolteacher when she dreamt of being a writer. The “American Dream,” it seems, is not for everyone.
In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez poignantly but strongly demands a solution to the inequality women of all cultures face everyday. Basically, do not get caught in a smile one cannot escape; yell, and let your complaints of injustice be heard!
In 'How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents', by Julia Alvarez, the Garcia family immigrates to the United States. Each of the four sisters, Carla, Yolanda, Sandra, and Sofia, reacted differently. All in all, they all managed to drift away from their family. People are afraid of change, so instead of adopting and realizing a culture new to them, they repel it and make foreigners match their culture, wiping out their original culture. Yolanda was pushed to the point of a mental breakdown because her husband did not understand her Hispanic heritage. John is an example of how people are afraid of change.
In 'How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents', by Julia Alvarez, the Garcia family immigrates to the United States. Each of the four sisters, Carla, Yolanda, Sandra, and Sofia, reacted differently. All in all, they all managed to drift away from their family. People are afraid of change, so instead of adopting and realizing a culture new to them, they repel it and make foreigners match their culture, wiping out their culture.
Over the course of Julia Alvarez’s novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the four girls and their parents move from the Dominican Republic or their “island home” to the United States, but the four girls are never truly happy in either of those countries. In the Dominican Republic they have the house and life they could only dream of, but they do not have the freedoms they are given in the U.S. Once they are in the U.S. the four girls love their new found freedom, but they despise the small houses and poverty they are forced to live in. When the girls are in the Dominican Republic, they complain about the old style parents and the lack of freedom, yet when they are in the U.S. with their freedom, they complain that they are not living the rich life in their perfect island home. The story is trying to show how hard it is for these girls to make a major transition in their life, but I believe that they are not putting all the effort they can to make the best of it and have the mentality that neither of the places they have lived in is good enough for them.
If these girls were truly trying to find the right home between these two places, I believe that the course of the novel would have been much different. For instance, when one of the girls is forced to stay on the island for six months she changes from the American girl she grew up as, into a mature and respectful woman on the island. When the other sisters come back to the island and see this they immediately try to “save her” but what they are really doing is forcing her to be just like them in the U.S. even though she has made a life for herself in the Dominican Republic. This shows that they all want to share the hardships together instead of giving more effort and being happy even though they are not all living together.
Morgan Schroll
August 6, 2010
Honors English
In the book How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents it starts with them as adults and ends when they are children. I think the author, Julia Alvarez wrote it backwards because then you got the true feeling of how hard it was to make the transition from living in the Dominican Republic to living in the United States. The four girls had the most trouble adjusting to the United States when they were older because back home they could only date certain boys, but in the United States they could date who they wanted. The girls had trouble making the right decisions when it came to men. It was also written backwards because the girls had spent most of their childhood in the Dominican Republic, so they didn’t have to make choices for themselves when they first came to the United States because they were still a little to young to decide for themselves. Having to make decisions in a society that the girls knew nothing about was really hard because no matter what they did something was always wrong. Then the girls made the wrong decisions about smoking, partying, and boys, so they got the wrong impression of what American life was all about. By making the wrong choices the girls made it harder for themselves to adjust to what the real America was like. If the book was not written backwards then their choices wouldn’t seem as bad as how their life was in the Dominican Republic because even though they made bad choices they have more freedom then they would have had if they stayed home.
In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, Papi comes back from New York City bearing wonderful gifts for the girls. Mami got a perfume bottle, YoYo got an iron bank of an old man sitting in a boat looking down at a menacing whale, and Sandi got an iron bank of a little girl with her jump rope frozen in midair. Carla received an iron bank as well. Hers was the blessed mother atop a cloud. When a penny was placed in the slot of Carla’s bank, the blessed mother rose up on the cloud and then lowered back down. Gladys, the new maid, saw this and whispered with excitement, “Blessed Mother!” And again a penny was put in and “again the coin rattled down, and Mary ascended for a moment, then fell back to earth until the next penny saved. Gladys’s face was radiant. Se made a slow, dazed sign of the cross.” (Alvarez 265) Gladys was like a child again, beaming with joy at the sight of this. This shows it doesn’t take much for a person to find their inner child. It could be waking up to presents on a Christmas morning, or simply smelling fresh-baked apple pie, just like your Grandma used to make. Childhood is always in reach no matter how old or mature a person may be. Overall, the feeling of youth is never too hard to acquire.
8===D
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