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Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents By Julia Alvarez: An Analytical Essay

714 Words3 Pages

For as long as people can remember, the stereotype that men have “more power” than women in a relationship has been a relevant argument. In the novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents the Author, Julia Alvarez, writes about four girls and part of that revolves around their relationships with men. In all of their relationships with men, he has the power in the relationship which means he makes the decisions for them. When they lived in the United States the girls and their mother had more say in the society. When they lived in the Dominican Republic men just saw them as submissive housewives who bear their children. Women who are also known to have slept with other men are dishonored. Also as the girls get older the author shows them independent and successful, even with a man. Which shows that the Garcia girls aren’t just some ordinary family. The feud between men and women has being going on for hundreds of years with not one that is completely better than the other. In this novel some men are betrayed worse than others, some are dangerous to the girls. “Yolanda makes out an undertow of men's voices. Quickly she gets in …show more content…

“Has he deflowered you? That's what I want to know. Have you gone behind the palm trees? Are you dragging my good name through the dirt, that is what I would like to know!"(30) In this quote Papi is furious at at Sofia just because she had sex with one guy. This is all due towards the geography and time in which the Garcia’s are in. Papi later after this quote also calls his own daughter a whore. Which shows how much this means to him in order for him to say something that drastic. All of this happened in the chapter “The Kiss” which the theme was the destruction of Papi’s and Sofia’s relationship due to Papi’s traditional dominican

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Patria always is thinking about her kids, to keep them safe from Trujillo. Patria said, “I saw it was a car aiming its lights at our bedroom window ‘¡ Ay, dios mio!’ I shook Pedrito awake and flew out of that bed terrified that something had happened to my boy. I know what Pedrito says, that I’m overly protective (Alvarez 150).

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How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Book Review I did not enjoy How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. The novel was not easy to understand and it was very hard to follow. The story jumped from past events to the present making it hard to recognize the current situation. The novel consists of many examples supporting my claim.

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In Julia Alvarez’s novel How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, she explores cultural identity, exemplifying the complexities of life between their Dominican legacy and their current lives in America. As an immigrant family takes on a new lifestyle, many stories go unheard. The stories of migrant families struggling to fit in can be seen as very relatable: “There’s more to the story. There always is a true story” (Alvarez 102). Adapting to a new life while trying to maintain one's own traditions and cultural values demonstrates that one's story is constantly developing.

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Everyone has a story to write about. Julia Alvarez surely did. She was born on March 27, 1950, in New York City. When she was three months old her parents, both native Dominicans decided to go back home. While there her father got involved with a plan to overthrow the dictator Rafael Trujillo.

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She says “Platano maduro no se vuelve verde” (Diaz, 208) which means a ripe banana cannot turn green. Through these words Lola was trying to say how once you lose your innocence, you can’t get it back- she is also referring to things that Belicia went through when she was growing up. From here it shows there are widely different expectations and feelings between this particular Dominican mom and her son versus her daughter. Lola had hoped that as her mother neared the end of her life, she would be able to show Lola the affection she never could show her as Lola grew up.

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Life Is for the Extraordinary Life is for the living not for the dead. There are people who come into this world and change it for the better. Julia Alvarez is one of these person through her work and her storytelling ability. She shares with the world the different cultures between Dominican Republic and New York. Alvarez is not the person she is today without what has happened in her life.

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n the Julia Alvarez novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the struggles the sisters experience due to moving from the Dominican Republic to America are the most influential factors in their internal conflicts in their lives. The mixture of the two opposing cultures creates numerous obstacles that are pivotal in the development of the Garcia family. If the Garcia family did not move, the sisters would never experience situations that lead to intimacy problems, cultural conflicts, or identity crises. Yolanda’s intimacy issues largely stems from the encounters she had with Rudy in “The Rudy Elmenhurst Story”. Yolanda falls for Rudy’s casual and easygoing demeanor, which coincidentally also happens to be the thing that keeps Yolanda from

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Throughout this book there are countless examples of the common gender issue in today’s society exploited. Today it is widely believed of equality in rights for all people regardless of heritage, race and gender. A majority of people in the world are in the support of female lead characters and an increase in the books regarding females. As time continues literature has introduced female leads with problems outside the typical house or friend issues. The only female characters introduced in the book with at least one quote is

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The author shifts the story back to a first person narrator to the individual to whom the chapter is devoted. The story focuses around the Garcia family who fled the Dominican Republic due to Political persecution when the father got into trouble for trying to undermine the military. The four daughters struggle between their Dominican and American selves as well as in their coming of age. Yolanda is the primary daughter whose full struggle is detailed throughout the text. The other daughters are interlaced into the stories, however, without as much detail as Yolanda.

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Hence, after her mother found the bag of marijuana, she was given the chance to go back to the United States, not to her boarding school but to go to the nearest college and stay living with Laura and Carlos. “Fifi opted to stay. Better one dozen chaperoned cousins, she figured, than home alone with Mami and Papi breathing down her neck and Peter Pan with his hand on her ass.” (Alvarez, 202) Sofia had an ongoing dispute with her father because she was unable to control her sexuality. The father felt that part of his honor

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One of the two books I read over the summer is How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez. This story took place in the late 1960s in the Dominican Republic. The four sisters Carla, Yolanda, Sandra, and Sofia learn to adjust in their new surroundings in New York after their family was forced to leave the Dominican Republic due to their father’s dilemma with the government. Throughout the book, the four sisters told stories that were very memorable to them. The second book that I read was October Sky, by Homer Hickam.

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Family builds a person to be the way they are today, without it every person would be ultimately a different person because family passes their beliefs and other things on from generation to generation. In the book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the reader follows a Dominican family with four girls that is forced to move to the U.S. Throughout being in the U.S. the four girls struggle with many things because of the difference in culture. The book talks about the struggles and transformations the girls go through as they adapt to their new lives in the United States. Along the way, each of the girls experiences something that is different from their culture that was passed on to them from generation to generation.

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At the Church she is washing feet as part of a ritual during Holy Week in the Roman Catholic culture. Up next in line, Pedrito steps up to get his feet washed. They talk and quickly fall in love with each other. Even faster after, they get married all while Patria is just 16 years old. The married couple has their two first children together and they are happily living.

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In traditional Dominican households, women are expected to play the submissive housewife role. The old-fashioned point of view is that a woman is to be a child bearer and care for her husband’s needs in every way. She is to cook, clean, care for her children and put her husband’s needs above hers. Specifically looking at the story “Fiesta 1980”, the portrayal of the women is shown when Yunior discloses his Papi’s affair with a Puerto Rican woman. “He didn’t say nothing to nobody, not even my moms.

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