Summary Of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, By Julia Alvarez

Since I was born it was pretty much predetermined for me that I would go to Central Catholic for High School. My dad had gone there and so had my two uncles and my grandfather had been President of the Board of Directors for years. I had grown up going to Central football and basketball games and I couldn’t wait to go to school there. However, in eighth grade, my two best friends at the time and I were approached by the head varsity basketball coach at North Andover High School. I had toured the high school in my town before, but I really had no interest in going. The head coach sat us down and told us that if we were to come to North Andover High, she would guarantee us all spots on the varsity team as freshman. This was a very tempting offer

When Sofia is caught with marijuana, she is given the choice of living with her parents and going to a Catholic school or going to the Dominican Republic and living there for a year with her aunt. Fifi was the wild child in America. but when she is sent to the Dominican, she becomes almost a different person. She became “beautifully acclimated to life” and started “seeing someone nice” (Alvarez 117). When her sisters go and visit her, the girls think that she looks like “the after person in one of those before-after makeovers in magazines” (117). Sofia essentially changed everything about her after just a few months in the Dominican Republic. She goes from someone that smokes weed and has wild stories about boys to a girl who is in touch with her Dominican roots. However, in Sofia’s case, parts of her identity are rooted in her innate characteristics. Even though some things have changed about her, there are still things that are the same about her. She still is “Ye Olde Fifi” (118) as her sisters describe her and falls right back into joking around with her sisters. Even though what she looks like has changed drastically, her personality has not changed that drastically. Sofia proves that even though place can shape your identity, it can only shape it to some extent because you are who you are down to your roots.In addition, Sofia’s sister Yolanda is also an example of how identity can be shaped by place. Yolanda goes back to the Dominican Republic when she is older. When she first meets with her aunts she finds herself talking “in halting Spanish” (7). She even states that “the more she practices, the sooner she’ll be back in her Native tongue.” Yolanda, though she has been away from the Dominican Republic for five years, she finds herself shifting to how she acts in the Dominican just a few hours after she